Tribune Review Editorial Board Distorts. Again.

From today's Sunday Pops:

The National Center for Public Policy Research says the Obama administration is "tasking some of our nation's most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming." Perhaps next we can employ our best spooks to count the number of angels on the heads of pins?

You'll note, of course, the rhetorical flourish of including "to count the number of angels on the heads of pins" in the criticism.

Let's take a brief detour and look at that phrase. It's usually used as a dismissal of of long involved debates on more or less useless topics. But it's also a dismissal of long involved religious debates on more or less useless topics. See that? The braintrust is trying to paint yet again global warming into a set of unsupported beliefs no more or less valid than a religion (or more likely a cult).

An A for bringing the subtle. An F for rudely redefining the science.

I AM surprised, given the rest of the stuff in the National Center for Public Policy Research's press release, the brain trust didn't spin further. I mean, c'mon. Here's the headline for Jebus' sake:

Spying on Icebergs Instead of Terrorists?

Obama Program Diverts Intelligence Assets to Climate Research

And here's how the press release starts:

As terrorists continue to infiltrate America, the Obama Administration is tasking some of our nation's most elite intelligence-gathering agencies to divert their resources to environmental scientists researching global warming.

Experts with The National Center for Public Policy Research are decrying this practice as a distraction from important counterterrorism duties. They further question if it a possible avenue to renew climate change subterfuge already plaguing some of these scientists.

"This is another example of President Obama not taking terrorism seriously," said Deneen Borelli, a fellow with the National Center's Project 21 black leadership network. "Our enemies must be laughing at the Obama Administration's incompetence.

Wait, wait. Let's take a step back. Who is this "National Center for Public Policy Research" and why would they be commenting on this overlap of Intelligence and Climate?

Here's their website. And on their About Us page, they describe themselves as:

The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today's public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.

In 1982, we started The National Center to provide the conservative movement with a versatile and energetic organization capable of responding quickly and decisively to fast-breaking issues. Today, we continue to fill this critical niche through a top-flight research and communications operation driven by results and the bottom line.

So it's a conservative think-tank that supplies talking points to media outlets. Good to know.

Also, it's gotten some funding, like a lot of other "sources" on the Trib's editorial page, from foundations controlled by the Trib's owner, Richard Mellon Scaife. Mediamatters lists about $400,000 granted to the center from Scaife controlled foundations over the last decade or so (more than a million if you go all the way back to 1985). It's not a huge amount, compared to, say, the Heritiage foundation. It's still a circle jerk but a little one.

But let's look at the charge leveled by the Trib's partners. The press release continues:

A January 5 article in the New York Times reported that the White House restarted a program in which scientists are obtaining classified intelligence data from the Central Intelligence Agency and National Reconnaissance Office. Information from these secret government surveillance programs is being used to track climate change.

And here's the Times article they reference. Like any good political propaganda, they're hoping you don't check their work. The Times begins:

The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests.

The collaboration restarts an effort the Bush administration shut down and has the strong backing of the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the last year, as part of the effort, the collaborators have scrutinized images of Arctic sea ice from reconnaissance satellites in an effort to distinguish things like summer melts from climate trends, and they have had images of the ice pack declassified to speed the scientific analysis.

And some details:

The monitoring program has little or no impact on regular intelligence gathering, federal officials said, but instead releases secret information already collected or takes advantage of opportunities to record environmental data when classified sensors are otherwise idle or passing over wilderness.

So it doesn't "divert" intelligence assets does it? It just forwards the info on to climate scientists.

But why would the intelligence community care anyway? Isn't that a waste of time/resources?

Um, no. Take a look at a the recent testimony of Dr Thomas Fingar, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis and Chairman of the National Intelligence Council:

Allow me to provide a summary of our key observations. We judge global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years. Although the United States will be less affected and is better equipped than most nations to deal with climate change, and may even see a benefit owing to increases in agriculture productivity, infrastructure repair and replacement will be costly. We judge that the most significant impact for the United States will be indirect and result from climate-driven effects on many other countries and their potential to seriously affect US national security interests. We assess that climate change alone is unlikely to trigger state failure in any state out to 2030, but the impacts will worsen existing problems—such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions. Climate change could threaten domestic stability in some states, potentially contributing to intra- or, less likely, interstate conflict, particularly over access to increasingly scarce water resources. We judge that economic migrants will perceive additional reasons to migrate because of harsh climates, both within nations and from disadvantaged to richer countries.

Testimony, by the way from June of 2008. Tell me again who was President then? Who ran the US Intelligence community then? And so this National Intelligence Estimate on the effects of Climate Change came out of which White House?

That's right. George W. Bush.

After reading all that, go take another look at the press release and then the Trib's snippet.

How silly do they look now?

I mean, disregarding the whole silliness of ignoring established science and all.

Pretty silly indeed.