US military goes to war with climate change skeptics
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Pastor Dale Morgan
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May 20, 2011, 4:02:32 PM5/20/11
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Perilous
Times and Climate Change
US military goes to war with climate change skeptics
Political action on climate change may be mired in Congress, but
one arm of government at least is acting: the Pentagon
Jules Boykoff guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 May 2011 15.30 BST
The Pentagon, with its responsibility for national security, is
proving a strong advocate of the need to plan for climate change.
Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP
Federal legislation to combat climate change is quashed for the
foreseeable future, scuttled by congressional climate cranks who
allege the climate-science jury is still out. What's become clear
is that, for some, the jury will always be out. We can't stack
scientific facts high enough to hop over the fortified ideological
walls they've erected around themselves. Fortunately, though, a
four-star trump card waits in the wings: the US national security
apparatus.
In 2006, I participated on a panel at the United Nations climate
change conference in Nairobi called "Communicating Climate
Change". With Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chair
Rajendra Pachauri and respected Arctic scientist Pål Prestud on
board, we aimed to figure out ways to convey climate change and
its effects with greater precision and weight.
An hour before the panel commenced, we learned the communications
director for climate curmudgeons, Senator James Inhofe
(Republican, Oklahoma) had elbowed his way onto the rostrum.
Bleating bias – the panel skewed toward the widely held scientific
consensus that climate change is real and humans are causing it –
the infiltrator proceeded to hijack the panel. Rather than
engaging the topic at hand, he questioned the scientific existence
of climate change, levelled ad hominem attacks against various
panellists, while brandishing "A Skeptic's Guide to Debunking
Global Warming Alarmism" (a document produced by his office).
During the discussion period, the largely international audience
responded in good faith, attempting to convince Inhofe's righthand
man that the most up-to-date science undercut his worldview, that
scientists weren't a grant-hungry cabal fiending for the next
funding fix. Unfazed, he didn't budge – not a single part per
million.
Five years later feels like a timewarp, with the political promise
of 2006 suspended in a molasses haze. 2011 brought a fresh
congressional crop content to ignore what the rest of the world
accepts: the IPCC's scientific consensus on climate change. When
Henry Waxman (Democrat, California) tried to amend to the Energy
Tax Prevention Act of 2011, to put the House of Representatives on
record recognising that climate change is occurring, is caused in
large part by humans and presents serious public health risks, it
was summarily shot down. Only one Republican broke ranks and voted
in favour (David Reichert of Washington state).
Enter what some might view as a counterintuitive counterweight: US
military brass. A recent report, "A National Strategic Narrative"
(pdf), written by two special assistants to chairman of the joint
chiefs of staff Mike Mullen, argued, "We must recognise that
security means more than defence." Part of this entails pressing
past "a strategy of containment to a strategy of sustainment
(sustainability)". They went on to assert climate change is
"already shaping a 'new normal' in our strategic environment".
For years, in fact, high-level national security officials both
inside the Pentagon and in thinktank land have been acknowledging
climate change is for real and that we need to take action to
preserve and enhance US national security interests. The Pentagon
itself stated unequivocally in its February 2010 in its
Quadrennial Defence Review Report (pdf), "Climate change and
energy are two key issues that will play a significant role in
shaping the future security environment." It noted the department
of defence is actively "developing policies and plans to manage
the effects of climate change on its operating environment,
missions and facilities".
CNA Corporation, a nonprofit that conducts research for the Navy
and Marines, echoed the Pentagon's urgency, writing, "Climate
change, from the Military Advisory Board's perspective, presents
significant risks to America's national security." The Army
Environmental Policy Institute, the National Intelligence Council
and the Centre for a New American Security have issued similar
reports on the dangers of runaway climate change and what it could
mean for geopolitics.
This isn't a tree-hugging festival. It's the US military and its
partners making clear-eyed calculations based on the best
available climate science.
So, why this quiet camaraderie between scientists and military
higher-ups? The answer, most certainly, is uncertainty.
Uncertainty is an inherent element of honest science. But in the
political sphere, uncertainty has been harnessed as an alibi for
denial and inaction. The military, however, operates under
conditions of uncertainty all the time. Like scientists, they wade
through the unknown to assess varying degrees of risk. As CNA
Corporation put it, military leaders "don't see the range of
possibilities as justification for inaction. Risk is at the heart
of their job."
Climate cranks – many of them the same people perpetually
hectoring us about the perils of national security – are choosing
to ignore the seriousness of climate change even when the
national-security experts they champion are telling us to do just
that. Talk about cherry-picking data.
While Congress members like Fred Upton (Republican, Michigan) yowl
about the EPA's efforts to regulate carbon emissions as "an
unconstitutional power grab" and attach the term "job-killing" to
every piece of environmental legislation with a political pulse,
national security officials have been offering dire warnings about
the perils of climate disruption and its offshoots like food
shortage, water depletion and massive migration.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been holding
shambolic hearings on climate change, should invite climate-minded
national security gurus to testify. Perhaps they can lob some
reality into the ideological fortress of denial before whipsaw
climate volatility becomes our everyday reality.