At the risk of quibbling with President Obama about the most serious threat facing America, I’m not sure I would rank global warming quite up there with some others . . . like say, for example, a small nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device detonated from orbit that would fry all electronic devices throughout most of the nation.
On Jan. 30, the same month Kim Jong Un’s regime conducted its fourth nuclear test (the third since President Obama took office), North Korea launched a three-stage rocket into space carrying what the hermit nation purported to be an Earth observation satellite — part of a “peaceful space program.” OK, call me a pessimist, but I doubt that Pyongyang’s ultimate intent is to orbit weather satellites or atmospheric CO2 monitoring instruments.
The inconvenient truth might be something entirely different.
Back in 2007, then-presidential candidate Sen. Obama proposed a “get-tough” policy in Foreign Affairs magazine, writing: “We must develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea’s nuclear weapons program,” because “Iran and North Korea could trigger regional arms races, creating dangerous nuclear flashpoints in the Middle East and East Asia.” Yes, and not to his credit, he got that assessment totally right.
Last December North Korea is believed to have conducted a successful submarine missile test, and is known to have worked with Iran on missile and nuclear technology since at least 1993. Included are exchange visitations of nuclear and rocket scientists and $500 million in Iranian financing for North Korea’s nuclear program in return for nuclear technology.
Added to that irony, Senior Editor Bill Gertz reported in the Washington Free Beacon that Kim Jong Un's regime even had the temerity to supply missile components to Iran “during recent nuclear talks,” which violated U.N. “sanctions on both countries, according to U.S. intelligence officials.” Gertz went on to say that details of those shipments “were included in Obama’s daily intelligence briefings” but were kept secret from the U.N.
Both rogue countries have demonstrated capacities to orbit payloads over the South Pole. Accordingly, recognizing that America’s greatest strike vulnerability is from a small nuclear device detonated in orbit above our mainland following a south-polar trajectory, the Pentagon is moving NORAD’s early warning and command/control headquarters to a hollowed-out Cheyenne Mountain bunker near Colorado Springs, Colo.
On Feb. 9, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that North Korea has expanded its five-megawatt Yongbyon uranium enrichment plant, and has also restarted a plutonium reactor shut down in 2007 that could produce nuclear weapons fuel “within a matter of weeks to months.”
Clapper estimated that in less than five years North Korea could have as many as 100 nuclear warheads along with ICBMs to deliver them to the United States. Adm. Bill Gortney of the American Aerospace Defense Command also warned last year that Pyongyang has “the capability to reach the [U.S.] homeland with a rocket.”
Of great concern is U.S. vulnerability to the detonation of a nuclear device a few miles above land. The resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would disrupt a vast region of our power grid and general electronic infrastructure over months or even years.
Many military intelligence officials believe that North Korea may have already mastered the art of producing a miniaturized EMP-capable warhead that can fit either on an ICBM aimed our way, or be delivered by a medium-range Nodong missile targeted on Israel.
An unclassified 2008 Congressional EMP Commission report warns that a year-long blackout would cause 90 percent of the population — tens of millions of Americans — to perish from starvation and societal chaos.
Dare to imagine circumstances with grid disruptions shutting down all water pumping and sanitation stations; lights and refrigerators; TV, radio and Internet communications; and manufacturing industries.
All equipment that relies upon complex electronic micro circuitry would cease to function, including banking transactions, air traffic control operations and ground transportation vehicles, law enforcement communications, gasoline pumps, heating and air-conditioning, and tiny implanted medical devices.
No urgency is evident to address such devastating prospects in the post-Bush White House since G.W. enacted an executive order declaring “a national emergency with respect to North Korea.” When Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was asked why North Korea’s January test wasn’t mentioned during the most recent State of the Union address that same month, he explained “We didn’t feel compelled to give” Kim Jong Un “that attention.”
Apparently, a well-established very near-term nuclear threat posed by a guy fanatical enough to have his own four-star general uncle executed doesn’t quite rise to the importance of sea level flooding that provably failed climate models predict might occur in a few thousand years.
That feverishly delusional political climate should have everyone alarmed.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom”(2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2012). Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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