Why does S.S. and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration need hollow-point bullets?

9.20.2007 12:00 am

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Sir John Houghton CBE FRS was co-chairman of the Scientific Assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1988-2002. He was previously chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (’92-’98), chief executive of the Met Office (’83-’91) and Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Oxford (’76-83). Still very much involved in helping world governments and organizations tackle climate change, Sir John agreed to meet GoCarbonFree at his home on the fringes of the Snowdonia National Park, Wales.

GoCarbonFree: Thank you very much Sir John for allowing us to interview you today. My first question is to ask you, as a weather scientist, what first alerted you to global warming? After all, the weather has always been unpredictable so what made you think — there is something different happening here?

Sir John Houghton: The physics of global warming is not new and the ‘greenhouse effect’ has been known for a couple of hundred years. It’s actually quite simple, the presence of water vapour, CO2 and methane etc in the atmosphere acts as a blanket that absorbs the infra-red radiation emitted from the earth’s surface, thereby keeping the planet warmer than it would otherwise be. If these gases weren’t there the earth would become an ice pack and I guess we’d be talking in an igloo today! However, if you artificially add to the amount of these gases in the atmosphere, especially CO2 (7,000 million tons a year of carbon, as carbon dioxide, is artificially put into the atmosphere), this will add considerably to the blanket and the earth will become warmer. CO2 concentrations are now almost 40 per cent higher due to man-made emissions. Getting back to your question, I know a lot about unusual weather phenomenon. I was head of the Met Office in October 1987 when that famous storm hit Southern England and caught everyone by surprise because our forecasts weren’t as accurate as we’d have liked them to be. That was a very unusual storm and I remember it well because the press blamed me! However, it’s very difficult to say if one single event is the result of human global warming because to do that, statistically, the event would have to fall outside the range of natural variability and very few events do. However, the one event that we can confidently say that about is the heatwave in Europe in 2003. This event was 5 standard deviations away from the average and 20,000 people died. Whilst it’s difficult to say that single events are solely due to man-made global warming, the trends are unambiguous — more floods, more droughts, an increase in world average rainfall — these all fit in to our expectation of global warming. In 1990, when I wrote the first IPCC report we couldn’t really say we’d seen anything that was unequivocally global warming. But now, the trends are clear and far more obvious.

WASHINGTON (AP) — It didn’t take long for the Internet to start buzzing with conspiracy theories after the Social Security Administration posted a notice that it was purchasing 174,000 hollow-point bullets.

Why is the agency that provides benefits to retirees, disabled workers, widows and children stockpiling ammunition? Whom are they going to use it on?

“It’s not outlandish to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest,” the website Infowars.com said.

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Another website, The Daily Caller, said the bullets must be for use against American citizens, “since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens.”

The bullets are for Social Security’s office of inspector general, which has about 295 agents who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes, said Jonathan L. Lasher, the agency’s assistant IG for external relations.

The agents carry guns and make arrests — 589 last year, Lasher said. They execute search warrants and respond to threats against Social Security offices, employees and customers.

A few weeks ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had a similar dustup when it solicited bids for 46,000 rounds of ammunition and shooting targets, seemingly to arm workers at the National Weather Service. It turns out the notice had a clerical error and the bullets were for NOAA’s Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, the agency said.

Social Security’s turn in the pillory hit a crescendo when Jay Leno joked about it in a recent monologue on “The Tonight Show.” ”What senior citizens are they worried about?” Leno asked. “I mean, who’s going to storm the building?”

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