Sorry Your Mommy Got Blown Up, Timmy: We Were Watching Icebergs

Pardon me for the sarcasm, but that future mea culpa is one that will likely be delivered (in substance, if not form) to the families of Americans killed because global warming cultists in the CIA are using assets to hunt clouds, tropical forests and ice instead of terrorists:

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.

That silly Bush administration!

Why, if there is one thing I've heard throughout the so-called "war on terror" it is that we've just had far too many intelligence assets being wasted, and that we might be better off draining analysts to retarget climate data from our multi-billion dollar constellation of satellites to a bunch of fear-mongering climatologists.

The article, of course, claims that:

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.

Bull.

Anyone who has ever worked—well, anywhere—knows that side projects that have "little or no impact" invariably end up drawing a substantial number of resources away from their primary missions. In this case, that inevitable scope creep is intruding on a line of work where the consequences of failure can be the death of the very citizens the CIA is supposed to protect.

As for the scientists, I would think they already have their hands full attempting to validate and explain their existing manipulated data and doctored models.

But that's just me.