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Wednesday, January 6, 2010

A CIA role worthy of its middle name: Intelligence


President Obama has taken the shackles off one Central Intelligence Agency project that could benefit humankind far more than any surreptitious spy or paramilitary operations. The CIA has been ordered to resume using its incredibly powerful spy satellites to collect imagery of evidence of global warming.

The program operated from 1992 until 2001, when it was shut down by President George W. Bush, an agnostic about global warming and foe of scientific efforts to reduce harmful industrial emissions.

No organization has the immense archival maps and data of the CIA. Its publicly available "World Factbook," found at www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook, is the premier source of updated material on 266 countries and their history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation and military issues,

But the CIA's unique high-resolution satellites orbiting the Earth also provide scientists with imagery that is so precise that photos must be slightly fuzzed up to prevent enemy nations from understanding the space platforms' true capabilities.

Of special interest are images of Arctic ice melts, unique precursors of climate change and long-term effects on the planet.

University of Washington Professor Norbert Untersteiner, a member of the 60-member team with secret clearance that works with the CIA, said 500 researchers would need to be sent to the Arctic regions to match the capability of the CIA satellites passing over the area.

A few critics, such as Wyoming's Republican U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, condemn CIA environmental intelligence gathering, saying the spy satellites should concentrate on military missions. However, as CIA Director Leon Panetta and others point out, the satellites gather data without abandoning military and intelligence missions.

This immensely wise additional use of spy satellites on behalf of the environment obviously will add indisputable credibility to what respected scientists have insisted all along: that the Earth is warming. This is especially threatening to Oklahoma U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, who has made a career out of pooh-poohing climate change as "a hoax."

This program garners more than technical and scientific credibility. It also is free of political manipulation. As it's said, photos don't lie. The same Washington politicians who fund and rely on CIA satellites for data about America's overseas enemies must now acknowledge the accuracy of evidence gathered about the environment by the same satellites.

Do they dare claim the CIA is concocting photos of the Arctic iceberg meltdowns?


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There are 12 comments


The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing Inc.
ydontugetit
01/08/10 - 08:34

Horrible waste of security resources.

WB
01/08/10 - 08:20

The frigid hit parade – over 1200 new cold and snow records set in the last week in the USA, more in progress

wattsupwiththat.com

GMo
01/07/10 - 12:47

Maybe while there at they can get pictures of the earths crust so we can stop plate tectonics.

Bob Dobbs
01/06/10 - 17:25

You know when the CIA gets publicly involved in something that there is an element of deception occurring - that is part of their mission.

They appear to be a huge bureaucracy both searching for and creating missions for themselves in a post-cold war world. The minimal and temporal threat of terrorism alone does not justify this massive bureaucracy. The best bet it to eliminate it completely and start over with a pure intelligence collection agency within the military or just use Naval Intelligence as we did for most of our history.

Reply to Bob Dobbs
WB
01/06/10 - 20:45

Careful bob, JFK was about to dismantle that Criminal Idiots Agency just before they whacked him..

Mike
01/06/10 - 15:26

And right on cue, whenever any article comes out about climate change, here come the denialists, dragging out the same old debunked talking points!

Mike
01/06/10 - 15:25

And right on cue, whenever any article comes out about climate change, here come the denialists, dragging out the same old debunked talking points!

WB
01/06/10 - 07:16

Ha ha ha ha, From propping up controlled dictators, funding terrorists to fight the Soviets, who then turn against America, supplier of arms to the Contras, in trade for Cocaine and marijuana, to be put on our streets for war profits, countless assassinations and murders world wide, and now the CIA is going to tell us the truth about the weather.. Ha ha ha ha ha ha...

The evidence that terrorists have been facilitated in their attacks is so plentiful that
it’s difficult to know where to begin. Most of it has received extensive exposure in the press,
but it has been invisible to the average person. Because we find it inconceivable that anyone
in our own government would deliberately facilitate terrorism, because we cannot imagine a
motive that would lead them to do that, we look right at the evidence and see it only as wellintentioned
mistakes, inefficiency, or blundering. Now that we have identified a possible
motive, let’s take the blinders off and re-examine the facts.
Since the early 1980s, the United States government, under

Since the early 1980s, the United States government, under the control of the CIA,
has provided covert funding and training for just about every terrorist regime in the world.
Bin Ladin and Hussein are prominent on the list, but they are not alone. The list is very
long. We are told that this was a well-intentioned policy to create opposition to the Soviets,
particularly in Afghanistan but that, somehow, it backfired on us. That’s called the
blowback theory. It is, of course, a smokescreen. How do we know that? Because the aid to
terrorist regimes did not stop when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. It continues to
this day. It is no longer covert; it’s right out in the open. The CIA via political means currently are sending
technology, money, and trade to Russia and China, countries that, by now, everyone knows
are suppliers of the very terrorist regimes we are fighting, and that includes weapons of
mass destruction. One can only shudder at what the so-called blowback of that policy will
be in the future.

Time to wake up kiddies..

Hey Express, enough of the Kinder garden writing essays Please, if you can't handle the truth then get out of the "News" Business... Ya know, those lies for profits just don't get it no more..

Ray – Sun Valley
01/06/10 - 04:58

What Global Warming? Have you checked out the weather across the northern hemisphere lately?

Incredulous
01/05/10 - 22:51

Maybe you should do a little fact checking before you write your next article. With the recent debacle at Camp Hampton near Khost, applauding POTUS Hussein's effort to further marginalize the CIA is evident in this fools errand. In case this newspaper has forgotten, we are in the middle of a war with people who wish nothing less than the complete and total destruction of our western way of life and civilization.
Pseudo-science with Al Gore the internet inventor is a complete waste of our limited CIA resources and is in time of war, at best treasonous. But then again this wrag of a paper has never been known for its integrity, insight or intelligent commentary. I suggest you go tell the Bergdahls that we cant be bothered to locate and rescue their son because Al Gore wants to take some pictures of the North Pole, stayed tuned....Al Gore will soon claim to have invented Santa Claus.

mpc
01/05/10 - 22:30

Dear Editor:

I am sure you are waiting with bated breath for some actually evidence of global warming. And I am sure you will accept the findings regardless of results, as a trully objective observer should, with any scientific experiment. I could tell by the tone of your article , that you have absolutely no preconceived notions about global warming. I can tell by your article that you are completely open minded.

That is good, because only a simple minded buffoon would accept the theory that a slight imballance in gasses would cause more than a negligible effect on the temperatures of the planet. Yet we are willing to believe, that an increase in carbon dioxide will raise the temperature of the planet, even thought e exact opposite appears to be happening. The last eleven years carbon dioxide levels have risen and the temperatures are dipping slightly.

Water is the key. And there is a lot of it on this planet. It is the major controlling force of weather, along with solar activity. Yet we know so little about it. We are willing to make sweeping judgments on ice melting at one pole and growing on another, yet we know almost nothing about the sea. What kind of fauna live in the deep oceans that may depend upon the gas that the EPA has declared a poison? And yet carbon dioxide is blamed for the catostophic rise is global temperatures, of which I have seen no evedence. Water is left out of the discussion, even though it has the greatest impact on weather and climate. I think I know the reason why. Can you imagine even a liberal congress person or ex vice president trying to convince the most gullible of believers, their own political base, that water is a poison, and needs to be regulated?

We all know that this is not about science. If it was we would be keeping records and doing research. The leaders of the global warming research have spent their time obfuscating results and hiding evidence that the globe is getting cooler, in the penumbra of their own ideology.

This is about money. After several global enviromental meeting, Kyoto for several years, and the summits culminating in Copenhagen, all the world has to show, beside the fact that global leaders leave one hell of a carbon footprint, is a promise from hillary for the US to pay 100 billion dollars to developing nations. So are we starting to save the planet or are we starting a world-wide welfare program? It is concievable that our 'leaders' want to borrow money from China, (the worst polluter in the world) to pay to China, as a developing nation.

I would not trust Al Gore to tie his own shoes. Can you imagine the decline in human population and comfort, if he were in charge of controlling the weather?

Anon.
01/05/10 - 21:21

We can trust that the photos will be interpreted correctly, kind of like the WMD sites in Iraq.

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