What I present will be controversial. But I see evidence that Putin influence peaks when climatic devastation increases: Vested interest in discord

After observing Putin behavior for 20 years, I have come to the conclusion that climatic devastation yields maximally beneficial conditions for Putin influence to spread . It does not mean that Putin is trying to INDUCE chaotic weather, but mitigation strategies would be "put to sleep" by targeted intervention in countries about Russia, for the purpose of insuring maximal damage in Putin's neighbors and adversaries, to create severe climatic distress. And in cases where distress, due to wild weather ensued, to exploit that distress to the maximal degree possible.

I am aware that some of Green technology, i.e. electric cars as an example could in some iterations due to their reliance on Rare Earth minerals be destructive to local regions supplying rare Earth minerals to the global economy. This however is in some sense a fixable problem. As I peruse early Car technology as of say 1910 there were car batteries, for electric cars which worked. The technology was crude, but workable.

The combustion engine as of the early 20th century was far more powerful and utilizable than engines for electric cars especially with Standard Oil boosted US domestic oil production. It was a fork in the road taken, but there is no reason today why Electric cars have to be larded with excessive inputs as of rare Earths

Still though, through exaggerating domestic discord, it would be in the interest in Putin, through divide and rule tactics to ruin any rational discussion of this topic. Through the likes of Ted Bundy and fanatics as of the far right, any rational discussion as to electrification of transport would be buried if Putin has his way. Also note this as to dealing with radicalization

quote

Programs like the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York’s?Disruption and Early Engagement Project (DEEP) ?focused on individual cases of radicalization within the district and judged whether?one-on-one interventions ?with “family members, mental health professionals, mentors, and state and local officials” were preferable to federal investigations and prosecutions. Downsized CVE programs like DEEP changed the outcomes of cases, avoided the political fracas, and could be applied to multiple forms of violent extremist radicalization.

end of quote

Such de escalation of radicalization would work against Putin's agenda, and so Putin wants cudgels to break up counter radicalization programs. So again what sort of macro agent would work best to ruin effective de radicalization ? In a word starvation, break up of agriculture and declining viability of nation states. I.e. nation states so stressed out that the administrators would have little time for time intensive deradicalization programs

Note this

quote

By focusing on the group of climate models that most realistically simulate the actual physics of raindrops, Studholme’s study found that the average climate model likely underestimates how extreme precipitation will change in response to global warming. It’s possible that there will be a twofold increase in the volume of extreme rainfall in the 21st century compared to what previous studies estimate, he said, which would help explain why the globe is already seeing such intense and unprecedented rainstorms. “So a very significant increase in how much rainfall the atmosphere dumps out on the land every day at its most extreme,” Studholme said.

End of quote

In a word, we will have a LOT more extreme weather. When that happens, Putin influence expands exponentially upon the distress of targeted societies. So it is not a stretch that climatic mayhem would lead to optimal conditions for Putin influence spreading in a country.

If you do not believe me, aside from Ukraine, which is fighting back, look at Sri Lanka which is going totally to hell. That Sri Lanka collapse is a match in heaven for Putin. And it has its counter parts globally.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/history-countering-violent-extremism-tends-repeat-it-shouldnt

quote

The History of Countering Violent Extremism Tends to Repeat. It Shouldn’t.

By?Bennett Clifford ,?Seamus Hughes ?Sunday, July 17, 2022, 10:01 AM

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray testify to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Sept. 21, 2021. Photo credit: DHS Photo by Zachary Hupp via Flickr.

Editor’s Note:?Political leaders at times launch programs to counter violent extremism, but those programs rarely get off the ground. Bennett Clifford and Seamus?Hughes?of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism describe the rise and fall (and potential rise) of CVE efforts and argue that more limited, focused programs are more sustainable and more effective.

Daniel Byman

***

In the two decades after 9/11, the U.S. government made repeated attempts to create a nationwide?countering violent extremism (CVE) ?policy, using the acronym to refer to any effort that attempts to reduce terrorism and violent extremism through means outside of arrests, prosecutions, and law enforcement investigations. These policy responses have followed a standard and well-worn path. First,?sibylline warnings ?of growing radicalization problems, pursuant to a particular ideology or community, are issued by outside experts, sub-federal authorities, or local communities. These alerts?pique the interest of policy officials , but before programs, strategies, and staff can be put into place, a major attack or event shocks both the public and policymakers, causing congressional overseers to demand immediate action.

This process—seen in the federal government’s response to post-9/11 events like the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the unprecedented mobilizations of American Islamic State supporters to Syria and Iraq—then begins to hit several roadblocks. The initial strategic concepts put forward are broad based: They are characterized by “whole of society” approaches that involve as many implementing actors as possible, include long laundry lists of potential policies, and aim to reach as large a swathe of society as possible. In turn, various federal agencies are?brought together in task forces ?and develop arsenals of CVE policies that range from?community outreach ,?to?one-on-one interventions for extremists , to attempting to?build “resilience” to radicalization ?in local environments. However, because of their reach, use of controversial methods and tools such as the systems used to identify potential extremists, and fierce grassroots organizing against anything with a CVE label, the major strategic CVE initiatives quickly face?political resistance . In the face of controversy, the responsible agencies whittle down their CVE workload?to a bare minimum , invest the limited resources and staff power in a select number of policies, and?change the names of terms and offices? to avoid backlash. A skeleton crew of federal employees manage what’s left of “CVE” within their respective agencies, at least until the next major attack happens and the cycle starts anew.

It is said that history repeats or, at the very least, rhymes. This is particularly true in the U.S. policy world. There is something refreshing about the predictability of it all. However, when it comes to countering violent extremism programs, we should do our best not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Despite decades of dedicated effort by several federal agencies and their earnest employees, the U.S. government and the public alike are left with relatively little to show for it. The vicious circle described above doomed the Obama administration’s first attempt at a?national CVE strategy , described in the August 2011 White House document “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism.” The strategy aimed to establish a framework for CVE policies focusing on building expertise in state and local law enforcement, engaging with communities, and countering extremist propaganda. In a?2020 article for Lawfare , we wrote that the first decade of the 2011 strategy was subject to “fits and starts … [the] programs have had many bosses, quite a few iterations and little coherency.” The reasons for its woes are manifold: divided agencies, limited resources and staff, unclear programmatic theories of change, a lack of a political constituency to defend it under pressure, and, perhaps most importantly, a?near-singular focus on a particular form of violent extremism ?(jihadism) that limited its effectiveness and subjected the strategy to even more criticism from civil society and communities.

Due to these factors, there was little left of the Obama administration’s CVE strategy that withstood the tides and survived the change of presidential administrations in 2016. Fortunately, however, this has meant that most federal CVE efforts that remained during the past five years have been measurable and meaningful programs with limited theories of change that were implemented on a small-scale basis and focused on individuals rather than groups, communities, or societies. Programs like the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York’s?Disruption and Early Engagement Project (DEEP) ?focused on individual cases of radicalization within the district and judged whether?one-on-one interventions ?with “family members, mental health professionals, mentors, and state and local officials” were preferable to federal investigations and prosecutions. Downsized CVE programs like DEEP changed the outcomes of cases, avoided the political fracas, and could be applied to multiple forms of violent extremist radicalization.

The Biden administration, in its 2021?National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism , took an important course correction when it acknowledged that the domestic terrorism threat picture comprises an ever-increasing range of violent extremist ideologies. As a result, any solution will require expanding “violence prevention ”—the new nomenclature for CVE—to a wider range of communities, ideologies, and contexts. Today, as a result of horrific white supremacist mass-casualty attacks in Poway, Pittsburgh, El Paso, and most recently in Buffalo, and the events of Jan. 6, 2021, there is a?renewed governmental focus ?on addressing racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism and what the U.S. government terms anti-government and anti-authority violent extremism.

But so far, most of the proposed CVE measures do not seem to have successfully integrated lessons from the last spin of the CVE wheel of fortune. Expansive CVE measures, building on outcry about the recent uptick in domestic violent extremism, are back to the fore—threatening to restart the old cycle again. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called for a?dramatic escalation in CVE funding ?focused on domestic terrorism, to the tune of billions of dollars. While the 2021 national strategy released by the administration did not put a price tag on its proposal, the?fourth pillar of the strategy ?calls on policymakers to “[tackle] the long-term contributors” to domestic violent extremism by “addressing the sources of that mobilization to violence,” signaling that part of its CVE agenda will include society-wide measures to inoculate wide swathes of the U.S. public against violent extremism. Arguably, these efforts have already proved their futility in ill-fated efforts like the rollout of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, which was?shuttered in the third week of its existence ?after concerns about the scope of the program prompted sustained backlash.

Regardless of their efficacy, broad-based CVE programs focusing on domestic extremism in this political climate are likely to be doomed to the same fate as the Disinformation Governance Board and other efforts that preceded it. The same problems hampered Obama-era CVE efforts focusing on jihadists, which prompted criticism from liberals opposed to society- or community-wide programming as?violative of civil rights ?and illegitimately targeting specific communities and from conservatives opposed on the grounds that it was?“too soft” on violent extremism . These critiques are still present but have flipped across the political lines and intensified when it comes to non-jihadist domestic terrorism. The only difference is that there is no guarantee that small-scale programs like one-on-one interventions that could be effective while avoiding political outcry would survive an initial wave of backlash. A major congressional fight over CVE could be the poison pill for any type of terrorism prevention focusing on domestic extremism.

Rather than inviting another national debate that weakens CVE policy, the Biden administration should break the wheel of fortune for CVE programming in the United States by skipping the large-scale initiatives and limiting its efforts to agency-specific guidance focusing on one-on-one interventions. Proponents of multibillion-dollar, gargantuan CVE agendas will say that an expansive scope is necessary to match the level of radicalization present in the country today, exemplified by?studies ?that show that millions of Americans believe in extremist conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 presidential election or ideas similar to the “great replacement” theory. These statistics are certainly cause for concern, but tethering CVE policy to this notion is not the solution. A more manageable figure is?2,700 , which is the number of domestic terrorism cases run by the FBI at any given time. From a public policy standpoint, a smaller, locally managed initiative that can take even a portion of those 2,700 cases off of the FBI’s caseload through interventions is infinitely preferable to a quickly conceived, politically controversial, and likely inefficiently managed large-scale CVE program that attempts to convince 20 million Americans to forego their conspiratorial viewpoints.

This is not to diminish the seriousness of the domestic terrorism threat environment in the United States, which by all accounts is at its?most severe in decades . But from a policy standpoint, this is a triage situation, in which only programs that are manageable and measurable should be considered as the nation’s attention and political realities can sustain only that narrow scoping. There is a place for that larger responsibility of community-wide resilience in government, and more so civil society, but the departments of Justice and Homeland Security leading that effort is a recipe for failure. They are not equipped or well placed to run sprawling, impersonal outreach efforts, like the 2016 campaign that boiled down to messaging “don’t be an extremist ”—messaging that is summarily dismissed by the very subsections of Americans they seek to influence.

New prevention programs focusing on domestic violent extremism, drawing from the Biden administration’s strategic guidelines, could be an important opportunity for the federal government to reset the course on CVE in the United States. The federal government should do its best not to repeat the mistakes of the past. It should avoid broad-based agendas with laundry lists of potential CVE-tangential policies and community-wide CVE programs, and instead focus on programs that center around one-on-one interventions of individuals already on the radar of law enforcement and primed for violence.

Topics:?Foreign Policy Essay

Tags:?CVE ,?Countering Violent Extremism ,?Biden Administration ,?counterterrorism ,?Department of Homeland Security

end of quote

And now for what will be the double whammy. Hugely increased extreme rainfall will wreck agriculture world wide which is a win - win for Putin

https://grist.org/extreme-weather/extreme-rainfall-will-be-worse-and-more-frequent-than-we-thought-according-to-new-studies/

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Extreme rainfall will be worse and more frequent than we thought, according to new studies

Researchers say some climate models are underestimating future floods.

Palazzolo Paolo / EyeEm/Getty Images

Zoya Teirstein

Staff Writer

PublishedJul 20, 2022TopicClimate + Extreme Weather

Joshua Studholme was finishing his doctoral program in physics at Lomonosov Moscow State University when his thesis advisor told him a story about Queen Victoria, the monarch who ruled the British Empire for the better part of the 19th century. The queen was walking the grounds at one of her palaces, accompanied by a science advisor, when she noticed that it was raining heavily in one corner of her garden but not at all in another corner. She wondered why that was. “Ever since then, imperial meteorologists have been trying to figure out why extreme rainfall can vary so much,” said Studholme, who is now an academic at Yale University. “It’s only really now that we’re getting the technology to answer that question.”?

Earlier this month, Studholme and three colleagues at Yale?published a study ?that seeks to finetune our understanding of extreme rainfall, now and in the future. They, and other researchers, suspect that the trick to accurately pinpointing the magnitude and frequency of extreme rainfall doesn’t just come down to measuring and tracking rain; it also hinges on the way researchers model climate change.

Climate scientists have long known that global warming increases rainfall, since a hotter atmosphere holds more water vapor. But when the remnants of Hurricane Ida?swept into the Northeast in the summer of 2021 , they brought the kind of catastrophic rain event experts had predicted?would typically occur later this century . Studholme’s study sought to investigate why Ida, and the many other record-breaking rain events that occurred last year across the globe in?Europe ,?China , and?other places , seemed to happen ahead of schedule. The question that guided his study wasn’t all that different from Queen Victoria’s query to her science advisor: Why is it raining where it’s raining, and why is it raining so?hard?in certain places? Luckily in the 21st century we have the know-how — decades of precipitation data and many different types of climate models that can help us predict what the future will look like — to start narrowing down the answers to those questions.?

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A?climate model ?is a set of mathematical equations that quantify the earth system processes that occur on land, in the atmosphere, and in the ocean, and the external factors, such as greenhouse gases, that affect them. Scientists around the world use dozens of different kinds of models that can be regional or global, fine-grained or coarse, primitive or advanced.?

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Studholme’s study used climate models to predict how much extreme rain the world will get in the future. But unlike previous studies that averaged all of the available climate models in order to figure out how much rain the planet will get in coming decades, Studholme decided to only use the group of models that predict that climate change will result in an?increase?in something called precipitation efficiency — how much of a falling raindrop reevaporates into the atmosphere before it hits Earth’s surface. He excluded the models that forecast a decrease, since scientific observations over the past two decades indicate that climate change is leading to an increase in precipitation efficiency. “Sometimes taking the average is a bad idea,” Studholme said. “If you were leaving New York and you wanted to go to Mexico and someone in the back seat said, ‘You’ve got to go South,’ and then another guy goes, ‘You’ve got to go North,’ and you split the difference, you end up in Los Angeles which is not where you wanted to go.”?

By focusing on the group of climate models that most realistically simulate the actual physics of raindrops, Studholme’s study found that the average climate model likely underestimates how extreme precipitation will change in response to global warming. It’s possible that there will be a twofold increase in the volume of extreme rainfall in the 21st century compared to what previous studies estimate, he said, which would help explain why the globe is already seeing such intense and unprecedented rainstorms. “So a very significant increase in how much rainfall the atmosphere dumps out on the land every day at its most extreme,” Studholme said.

Chad Thackeray, a climate researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in Studholme’s study, said the research was “super interesting and useful” because it identifies relatively small tweaks that climate modelers can make to improve their simulations. In other words, we’re getting closer to successfully using climate models to understand how rain works and how climate change is influencing it.?

Thackeray published his?own study in April ?that looks at a related piece of the rain puzzle: how?frequent?intense rain will become as climate change accelerates. In order to obtain his results, Thackeray also had to weed through climate models to find the simulations that most accurately showed how warming is already influencing precipitation. He found that extreme rainfall will occur about 30 percent more often by the end of the century, compared to how often it happens right now, under a?medium-emissions scenario ?— if humans reduce greenhouse gas emissions to some extent instead of continuing on business as usual.?

“There’s a lot of work that’s trying to untangle why climate models developed around the world will give slightly different answers to a question,” Thackeray said. “There’s been a lot of progress in recent decades, but once you get to highly impactful, extreme events that are very rare, we find that there’s still significant uncertainty.” Studholme and Thackeray’s studies get us a couple of steps closer to clearing up that uncertainty. And they both point to the unfortunate reality that rain is going to get more extreme as the planet warms.?

The good news is that there are solutions that governments can invest in to protect citizens from flooding, starting right now. Two things lawmakers can do to help people prepare for extreme rainfall is fund initiatives that harden home infrastructure, such as rooftops, and improve drainage systems so that water has somewhere to go instead of pooling when it hits the ground. Though much of the United States is?unprepared for extreme flooding events and other climate-related disasters , states are beginning to think seriously about how to become more resilient. And the federal government has been freeing up money for those efforts. The bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress last year?allocates funding to states ?to harden transportation infrastructure against climate change, create loan funds for resilience projects, upgrade old sewer systems, and more.

“That’s the silver lining,” Studholme said. “We already have the technology to do this.”

end of quote

Andrew Beckwith, PhD