John Kerry: Refrigerators and terrorists. A Limerick.

My terrorist fridge has been hacked.

No teens had its content ransacked.

But more evil than ISIS

is the climate change crisis.

Says Kerry: It’s HFC’s packed.

Source, Washington Examiner: “Air conditioners and refrigerators pose as big a threat to “life on the planet” as the threat of terrorism,” Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday.

Kerry was in Vienna negotiating a global climate deal to phase out chemicals used as refrigerants in basic household and commercial appliances such as air conditioning and refrigerators, called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. The chemicals are a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions that many scientists blame for contributing to global warming.

Kerry made the remarks as part of a pep talk for negotiators working through the weekend to amend a 1987 treaty called the Montreal Protocol to deal with the chemicals.

“Yesterday, I met in Washington with 45 nations — defense ministers and foreign ministers — as we were working together on the challenge of [the Islamic State], and terrorism,” he said. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we — you — are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”

Totally unrelated? From Julie Hort, Business insider Jan 16,2014:

Security researchers at Proofpoint have uncovered the very first wide-scale hack that involved television sets and at least one refrigerator.

Yes, a fridge.

This is being hailed as the first home appliance “botnet” and the first cyberattack from the Internet of Things.

A botnet is a series of computers that seem to be ordinary computers functioning in people’s homes and businesses, but are really secretly controlled by hackers. The Internet of Things is a new term in the tech industry that refers to a concept where every device in your house gets its own computer chip, software, and connection to the Internet: your fridge, thermostat, smart water meter, door locks, etc.

To a hacker, they all become computers that can be hacked and controlled.

In this case, hackers broke into more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets, such as home-networking routers, connected multi-media centers, televisions, and at least one refrigerator, Proofpoint says. They then used those objects to send more than 750,000 malicious emails to enterprises and individuals worldwide.