Sep 21 2009
Fake New York Post Highlights Real Dangers
“Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it.” – Tony Blair
Prankster Activists Strike Again
Last year, the group The Yes Men printed a fake version of the New York Timeswith a headline that read “Iraq War Ends” and distributed thousands of copies on the streets of New York. This year, they’ve spoofed the New York Timeswith a headline that read “Iraq War Ends” and distributed thousands of copies on the streets of New York. This year, they’ve spoofed the New York Post in a special global warming edition with the alarming headline “We’re Screwed”:
The second story in the fake newspaper carries the title “Pentagon top brass warn: Act now, or pay later with ‘lives’”. Although the paper is clearly a spoof, the article itself is not too far off the mark, and except for the fact that they are taken cobbled together to form one narrative, the quotes and references to the NDU study are real.
The Article Text
The Pentagon has run the numbers. And they’ve decided global warming is real, it’s happening now, and it’s a US national security threat.
The Department of Defense, using Navy, Air Force and NASA weather programs, concluded that increasingly severe hurricanes, rising sea levels, drought, pandemics and famine may result if we don’t act fast. Such dire scenarios could lead to mass migrations of refugees across borders, destabilizing the US and other countries. Regional wars would then break out over increasingly scarce clean water and food. The US military would almost certainly get pulled into the crisis.
“The sense that climate change poses security and geopolitical challenges is central to the thinking of the State Department and the climate office,” said Peter Ogden, chief of staff to Todd Stern, the State Department’s top climate negotiator.
The National Defense University, a DoD-funded institution, last December conducted an exercise examining what would happen if Bangladesh flooded and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled into India, triggering religious conflict, the spread of contagious diseases and widespread infrastructure damage.
But all this isn’t just hypothetical, military experts are saying: it’s already real. Take the country of Sudan, where millions have died in brutal civil war. A big part of the reason for the fighting there is the spreading of deserts and drought.
The Pentagon warns that the U.S. military will inevitably get drawn into regional wars to protect its own vital interests.
Said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, former head of Central Command, “We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives.”
On top of potential loss of our troops, military installations are under threat from climate change too. Bases in Homestead and Pensacola, FL. have already been devastated by massive storms and rising seas. Diego Garcia, one of our most strategic bases in the Indian ocean, is currently under direct threat from sea-level rise.
The Pentagon intends to continue developing contingency plans to deal with the now undeniable national security threat of global warming
The Yes Men
While The Yes Men use outrageous and usually very funny tactics, their messages are potent and timely. In 2007 the group managed to pose as representatives of Exxon and the National Petroleum Council and deliver a keynote address to a group of oil company executives on the utility of turning dead bodies into oil.
National Security and Climate Change
The (real) New York Times ran a story in August of this year that basically echoed the entire message above. In fact, from the Ogden and Zinni quotes to the NDU study, it appears that The Yes Men used that article as the basis for this one, showing their affections once again for the NYT.
The issue of Climate Change is one that is on our minds at MOAA right now, as we are partnering up with the Pew Charitable Trusts and CNA for a forum that will be held in Arlington on Wednesday, September 30th. With the keynote address coming from Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and featuring panelists such as Senator John W. Warner, Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Forces and VADM Dennis V. McGinn USN (Ret.), Member, CNA Military Advisory Board, the forum will be a lively conversation.
The forum, titled National Security, Energy and Climate Forum: Challenges and Solutions for the Future is free to the public but seating is limited. Please email MOAA at NSECforum@moaa.org to register. A full description of the event can be found here (.pdf).
Update 1
The New York Post didn’t find the prank as amusing as others did:
The Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., wasn’t impressed, calling the effort by perennial pranksters the Yes Men a “Witless Spoof in Flawless Format” in a statement released Tuesday, a day after the faux Post hit the streets.
The overall endeavor, the Post said, was a “limp effort,” and the fraudulent newspaper “has none of the wit and insight New Yorkers expect from their favorite paper. The Post will not be hiring any of their headline writers.”
Oh well, humor is in the eye of the beholder…
Discussion
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Excellent site, keep up the good work. I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks,
A definite great read..
-Bill-Bartmann
FYI…..Plaxico Burress The NFL Footbal Player Begins Prison Sentence Today!
Not that I have anything against the guy but finally these athletes might start to get it….You CAN’T just do anything you want and get away with it. If I get caught with a gun, I would have to do time too.
Just my 2 cents…..
Are you kidding? You’ve bought-into the Global Warming Disaster bilge? Shame on you. I won’t be renewing my membership.
Ken Sherman
CDR, USN (Ret.)
North Grafton, MA
I note that the latest research shows that global COOLING began about 5 years ago and is expected to continue for the next 10 to 20 years – caused by Solar, NOT Human activity!
And yet the last 5 years still rank in the top 10 of the hottest years on record, and the ‘latest research’ states that the warming would resume after the cooling, if you could call it that. The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting at a runaway speed, far faster than studies just five years ago indicated. Whether that is due to human activity or natural sun cycles is irrelevent because it won’t stop the changes from happening, and I don’t see this article taking a stance either way.
Islands in the Pacific are on the verge of disappearing, methane is being released from permafrost in Alaska and Russia and the Arctic is now reaching the point where it is traversable in the summer. These changes are real and measurable, and should not just be ignored because some people want to argue about the causes.
MOAA hosting a forum to discuss how changes to the environment will affect our national security and hopefully stoke good ideas is a great endeavor.
The following link contains a good summary of the FACTS associated with the reality we are facing: http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-BusinessofGreen/idUSTRE58M38620090923
I personally believe that we’re seeing the result of an industrialized, over populated world, but that we can overcome it as a civilization if we set our best minds on the task at hand.
Carol Browner, please. She is a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS), which is a formal organ of the Socialist International. Obama has at the least implicitly endorsed an utterly radical socialist agenda for his administration’s environmental policy. What do you expect her to say?
Well I can see that this site has a distinctive lean to the right. As Chris Johnson says, you can argue until you are blue in the face, and try to point all the fingers you want, but, it’s happening so let’s deal with it, rather than put our heads in the sand. Oops, water that’s going to cover where the sand used to be:-)
Why is it so hard for people to believe that human activity can negatively affect the environment? I grew up watching human garbage destroy the waters that I loved to swim in; eventually fishing and swimming had to be banned in those waters. Is that what people want to leave their grandchildren? What is so wrong with cleaning the environment? Americans need to stand together to do the right thing, not become more divided over hard core political agendas.
Well said, Maricl, well said.
Although, I see the argument over global climate change, warming, freezing, disaster, whatever you want to call it like a hypothetical argument over the initial orbit of an incoming asteroid or comet. It doesn’t matter what happened when by what or who, it is coming straight for us. Either take the measures necessary or wait to get hit. I say we take the necessary measures.
This argument reminds me a lot of the creationism, birther and deather controversies. No matter what evidence is presented to firmly support one side, the other side comes up with some justification to let that evidence support their crap. And it seems like the same people are on the same sides on most of these debates. If you fall into the category of the first group, you might want to consider this idea carefully.
RJD
I‘m sure many of you are like me and one of the first things you do in the morning is head here and check out the new post. Along with seeing the new posts, I’m also always checking out the blog roll rss feed and watching them grow, or shrink sometimes. In one of my past …but all in all excellent site. Keep it up!