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792. Security Strategies Today: Trends and Perspectives
- Author:
- Fred Tanner, Sunjay Chandiramani, and Nayef R.F. Al-Rodhan
- Publication Date:
- 03-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
- Abstract:
- There have been considerable developments in security-policy thinking since the end of the Cold War, and a complex set of transnational threats and challenges necessitates new security policies and strategies. Not only the attacks of 11 September 2001, but also the dark side of globalisation such as climate change, the global spread of dangerous technologies and international organised crime have changed the security perspective and policy procedures in recent years. Consequently, new national-security strategies, white papers and security-policy documents have been drafted in order to take into account the changing security landscape.
- Topic:
- Security, Climate Change, Globalization, and Counterinsurgency
793. Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science
- Author:
- Gus Van Horn
- Publication Date:
- 12-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- Al Gore, the Weather Channel, "environmental activists," and many politicians claim there is a worldwide "consensus" among scientists that the earth's climate is about to change drastically due to human activity. On the basis of this alleged consensus, governments are considering coercive measures to head off catastrophe-rationing fuel, regulating carbon dioxide emissions, dictating the kinds of lightbulbs we can buy, and so on. Of course, the idea that man is responsible for impending climatic doom has its detractors. Some say the science is not settled; some say it is settled, and that human activity is not warming the planet; and some say that even if human activity were warming the planet, that might be good. But who among us truly understands the scientific arguments alleged to support the various claims? Wouldn't it be nice if a scientist wrote a book carefully documenting and explaining, in layman's terms, the cases for and against man-made global warming? Then, we could determine for ourselves which claims are supported by evidence and logic. Based on favorable publicity from conservative media and politicians, Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science would appear to be just such a book. Plimer claims to present an "integrated scientific understanding of the environment," and the book-chock-full of figures and graphs and containing more than 2,300 footnotes in its 504 pages-certainly makes a powerful first impression. Add to that EU President (and noted climate-change skeptic) Vaclav Klaus's statement that the work is "clear, understandable, and very useful," and a good grasp of the arguments for and against man-made global warming would seem to be just a few hundred pages away. Unfortunately, Heaven and Earth utterly fails to deliver on its promise. Rather than clearly presenting the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis and specifying the kind and scope of data necessary to evaluate it, Plimer presents the reader with a disorganized hash of poorly-presented data; repeatedly mocks climate models without providing sufficient evidence or argument to warrant such mockery; dismisses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a bogeyman "unrelated to science" (p. 20), without adequately explaining why this is so; and generally presents an incoherent argument against a straw-man version of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. . . . To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options: Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article
- Topic:
- Climate Change
794. Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed
- Author:
- Daniel Wahl
- Publication Date:
- 12-2009
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- The Objective Standard
- Institution:
- The Objective Standard
- Abstract:
- I'm an environmental scientist, but I've never had time to review the "evidence" for the [man-made] causes of global warming. I operate on the principle that global warming is a reality and that it is human-made, because a lot of reliable sources told me that . . . Faith-based science it may be, but who has time to review all the evidence? (p. 318) That is just one of many astonishing statements by global warming alarmists that Christopher C. Horner catalogs and analyzes in Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. Horner amply demonstrates that the acceptance of such "faith-based science" is the modus operandi of many activists, journalists, and politicians-who want you to accept it too. Horner exposes the tactics alarmists use to sell you on the faith and keep you ignorant of the facts surrounding alleged global warming. One such tactic is simple, premeditated deception: Consider the example of Gore's co-producer Laurie David, who followed [Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth] with a book aimed at the little ones. . . . [In the documentary] one ought to have suspected that Al Gore was up to something when he ran two lines [for CO2 concentration and temperature change] across the screen . . . claimed a cause-and-effect relationship, and then forgot to superimpose them. . . . Gore was correct to insist there was a relationship between the temperature line and the CO2 concentration line, as measured over the past 650,000 years. . . . The relationship, however, was the precise opposite of what he suggested: historically, it warms first, and then CO2 concentrations go up. Gore's wording and visuals were cleverly deceptive-he implied, without stating . . . that CO2 increases are followed by temperature increases. The reason he didn't source his claim is that the literature doesn't support it. Somehow believing only the young would bother to open their [book] targeting children, David and [co-author Cambria] Gordon weren't so clever. Their book included the two lines, but dared superimpose them, and even stated the phony relationship more outlandishly than Gore did in his film. The reason that temperature appeared to follow CO2 proved to be because they reversed the labels in the legend (pp. 199-200). Horner shows that such deceptions are typical, not just of documentary producers and author-activists seeking to spread the faith, but also of so-called scientists and purportedly scientific organizations including, for instance, the UN's Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Of the IPCC, Horner writes: The unsupportable advocacy from these supposed sages of science begins with their threshold dishonesty of putting forth a lurid and alarming "summary," drafted by a few dozen people who often are activists-and encouraging claims that these conclusions represent the consensus of thousands of "the world's leading scientists" from the world over (p. 294). These summaries, Horner shows, are written before scientists have submitted data. Even worse, it "appears that the IPCC intends to make the scientists . . . change their findings if they depart from the summary in order to bring them in line with it" (p. 304). The IPCC's "Lead Authors" edit out inconvenient findings, such as the following two, which, according to one scientist, had intentionally been "included at the request of participating scientists to keep the IPCC honest." . . . To read the rest of this article, select one of the following options:Subscriber Login | Subscribe | Renew | Purchase a PDF of this article
- Topic:
- Climate Change
795. Coping with Global Change
- Author:
- Anja H. Ebnöther and Ernst M. Felberbauer
- Publication Date:
- 11-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Austrian National Defence Academy
- Abstract:
- At the beginning of the 21st century, the international security agenda is witnessing profound change. We are confronted with a shifting face of violence. We are no longer – or at least no longer primarily – confronted with traditional threats, such as violence between states or coalitions of states. Today, most conflicts are of a non-traditional nature – from intrastate conflict to terrorism. This trend will continue.
- Topic:
- Security, Climate Change, and Globalization
796. Climate Shame: Get back to the table Initial analysis of the Copenhagen climate talks
- Author:
- Kate Raworth
- Publication Date:
- 12-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Copenhagen was a unique opportunity to turn the world's course away from climate disaster, towards a safe future for all of us on this small planet. Massive global public mobilization demanded it. But leaders of the major powers negotiated for their national interests, instead of safeguarding our shared destiny.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Development, Poverty, and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- United States
797. Underdevelopment, Resource Scarcity, and Environmental Degradation
- Publication Date:
- 12-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Peace Institute
- Abstract:
- Underdevelopment, resource scarcity, and environmental degradation are cardinal, even existential, threats to human security. These challenges not only threaten human life and well-being, but also impact the global geopolitical and economic landscape. Chronic underdevelopment condemns more than 1 billion people to lives of poverty, illness, and poor political and economic prospects. Long-term goals of economic and human development are undermined by scarce, unreliable, or unaffordable supplies of vital resources such as food, water, and energy. Climate change threatens to exacerbate the effects of environmental degradation, putting land and livelihoods at grave risk.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Development, Environment, Poverty, and Natural Resources
798. Climategate and Climate Science
- Author:
- Kenneth P. Green and Steven F. Hayward
- Publication Date:
- 12-2009
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- AEI's environmental team has been especially busy lately responding to numerous press inquiries about the “Climategate” scandal. We reprint below two pieces, one by Steven F. Hayward that appeared in The Weekly Standard, and another by Kenneth P. Green, which appeared on The American. Hayward's piece was mentioned prominently on Fox News Sunday. Green also testified on the science of global warming recently before the Senate Committee on Finance. In addition, Samuel Thernstrom and Lee Lane, who are codirecting AEI's Geo engineering Project, have been following the developments and commenting on them. AEI released an updated version of its Public Opinion Study “Polls on the Environment and Global Warming,” which shows that, even before the latest controversy, opinion about the seriousness of global warming had declined sharply in several recent polls.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Environment, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- America
799. Market Constitution Analysis: A New Framework Applied to Solar Power Technology Markets
- Author:
- Guido Möllering
- Publication Date:
- 07-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
- Abstract:
- This paper outlines an integrative framework for the analysis of market constitution and explores its application to solar power technology markets. These markets are currently still in the making and, therefore, particularly suited to studying constitutive processes and the elements that play a role in them. In applying the framework to the constitution of solar power technology markets in Germany from the mid-1990s, the paper focuses on three examples of how constitutive mechanisms that trigger and drive market constitution processes and shape the constitutive elements of markets operate in distinct but interrelated ways: exploitation of technical inventions, business diversification, and political entrepreneurship. The analysis shows the role of market actors in “making” a market at the same time as these actors evidently become “marketized” by adopting market logic. Markets cannot be taken for granted in the field of solar power technologies or, rather, their actual taken-for-grantedness is one measure of the degree to which their constitution has been achieved.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Energy Policy, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- Germany
800. Reconciling Climate Change and Trade Policy
- Author:
- Arvind Subramanian, Aaditya Mattoo, Dominique van der Mensbrugghe, and Jianwu He
- Publication Date:
- 12-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics
- Abstract:
- There is growing clamor in industrial countries for additional border taxes on imports from countries with lower carbon prices. While this paper confirms the findings of other research that unilateral emissions cuts by industrial countries will have minimal carbon leakage effects, output and exports of energy-intensive manufactures are projected to decline, potentially creating pressure for trade action. A key factor affecting the impact of any border taxes is whether they are based on the carbon content of imports or the carbon content of domestic production. The paper's quantitative estimates suggest that the former action when applied to all merchandise imports would address competitiveness and environmental concerns in high income countries but with serious consequences for trading partners. Border tax adjustment based on the carbon content in domestic production would broadly address the competitiveness concerns of producers in high income countries and less seriously damage developing country trade.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Economics, Energy Policy, Environment, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- China