earth control: power, resistance, and deviance within a resource empire panopticon
TRANSCRIPT
EARTH CONTROL: POWER, RESISTANCE, AND DEVIANCE WITHIN A RESOURCE EMPIRE PANOPTICON
By: Jason Thompson
5/8/2015 Presented at UNLV
Book written with grant from: ERC
POWER
1959: International co-operation in the peaceful uses of outer space
“several of the biologists, oceanographers, and atmospheric scientists who advised governments on the 1977 treaty to ban military uses of environmental modification—the ENMOD convention—were enlisted to craft the first major reports on anthropogenic climate change” (Hamblin, 2013, p. 10)
The Cold War, RAND, and the Generation of KnowledgeDavid Hounshell asked military funding distort science?
WHY?
https://medium.com/@WhiteHouse/unleashing-the-power-of-data-to-serve-the-american-people-198534d009a2
Unleashing the Power of Data to Serve the American People
“surveillance is too often regarded as a discrete activity linked to concrete state aims rather than a more general imperative to understand and control both the earth and its inhabitants” (Turchetti and Roberts, 2014, p. 2)“Both superpowers, especially the US administration, conceived the capacity to monitor the earth within a framework of control through strategic influence, without the need for explicit sovereignty over colonial spaces. This led to the establishment of infrastructures that routed signals from overseas outposts to central homeland units devoted to their analysis. Human communications were—and still are—a miniscule part in this traffic, which includes data from the oceans, the surface and interior of the earth, and the sky”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/bamford-nsa-idUSL2N0EM0SG20130610
“Time and again over the decades, this pattern has been repeated.”
So, once again, deals were made with the major telegraph companies - the Internet providers of the day - to grant the SIS (and later the NSA) secret access to their communications.Codenamed "Operation Shamrock,"
http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-prism-shamrock-history-spying-telegraphs/
RESISTANCE
“only a satellite can keep tabs on nations that resist such monitoring, JASON scientists warned” (ClimateWire, Jan. 28, 2011). President Obama expressed what seemed like frustration at
the resistance of some countries to verification. “I don’t know how you have an international agreement where we all are not sharing information and ensuring that we are meeting our commitments. That doesn’t make sense.” http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416763/a-technical-solution-to-monitoring-chinas-co2/
A network of ground-based greenhouse gas monitoring stations, weather balloons and satellites could make it possible to accurately monitor the emissions of a country as small France or Germany–without the need for invasive inspections, says Ronald Prinn, a professor of atmospheric science at MIT. It would cost billions, but without it, it could be hard to know if a treaty is actually bringing down emissions as planned. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/416763/a-technical-solution-to-monitoring-chinas-co2/
Second, even if developing countries are able to monitor their emissions, many are wary that reporting emissions would open them to pressure to cap those emissions—something they have strongly resisted. Third, countries such as China publically state that concessions for an internationally verifiable monitoring system are a direct infringement on their national sovereignty. Despite these barriers, an agreement that focuses on emissions monitoring might be easier to implement than an arrangement based on binding emissions reductions. http://www.cfr.org/climate-change/global-climate-change-regime/p21831
Eco-Spyinghttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-
confe/6841880/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Barack-Obama-risks-Chinas-anger-over-satellite-monitoring.html
Sovereignty issues object to signing because developed countries not cutting enough.
Deviance- GHG Unbelievershttp://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2015/04/17/wind-leaseholders-may-be-on-the-hook-for-billions/
http://judithcurry.com/2015/04/07/draft-aps-statement-on-climate-change/
