The Green Geek

CIA Satellites Tracking Climate Change

Posted by Steve on 01 9, 2010

A CIA program designed to study climate change by tracking Arctic ice and other visual indicators has been reactivated and is already providing shocking evidence of recent rapid ice loss, much to the dismay of climate change skeptics.

This program was operating throughout the Clinton years, but was shut down by the Bush administration. The program has strong backing from both the Director of the CIA as well as climate change scientists worldwide, but as usual, Fox News gets it all wrong and attempts to rile up the masses with misinformation. A recent segment on the “news” show ‘Fox & Friends’ alleged that the CIA was giving up on gathering intelligence on terrorist activities, to study icebergs, which is completely false. Treehugger.com has an excellent post covering this particular spectacle.

The program doesn’t involve re-tasking satellites to different orbits, or diverting any resources away from intelligence-gathering missions, it simply provides existing images of glaciers and sea ice to a group of scientists. In effect, images that were recorded over non-critical areas and were previously ignored and are now being studied again. It’s simply making better use of already available data.

A few of the preliminary images have been released and are available for public viewing at the Global Fiducials Library site. Hopefully the reactivation of this program by the CIA and the shocking evidence presented will put an end to people listening to the the utter nonsense being spewed by Fox News and other climate change skeptics.