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Global Warming Called Security Threat
WASHINGTON - For the second time in a month, private consultants to the government are warning that human-driven warming of the climate poses risks to the national security of the United States.A report, scheduled to be published on Monday but distributed to some reporters yesterday, said issues usually associated with the environment - like rising ocean levels, droughts and violent weather caused by global warming - were also national security concerns.
"Unlike the problems that we are used to dealing with, these will come upon us extremely slowly, but come they will, and they will be grinding and inexorable," Richard J. Truly, a retired United States Navy vice admiral and former NASA administrator, said in the report.
The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military.
The report recommends that climate change be integrated into the nation's security strategies and says the United States "should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability."
The report, called "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change," was commissioned by the Center for Naval Analyses, a government-financed research group, and written by a group of retired generals and admirals called the Military Advisory Board.
In March, a report from the Global Business Network, which advises intelligence agencies and the Pentagon on occasion, concluded, among other things, that rising seas and more powerful storms could eventually generate unrest as crowded regions like Bangladesh's sinking delta become less habitable,
One of the authors of the report, Peter Schwartz, a consultant who studies climate risks and other trends for the Defense Department and other clients, said the climate system, jogged by a century-long buildup of heat-trapping gases, was likely to rock between extremes that could wreak havoc in poor countries with fragile societies.
"Just look at Somalia in the early 1990s," Mr. Schwartz said. "You had disruption driven by drought, leading to the collapse of a society, humanitarian relief efforts, and then disastrous U.S. military intervention. That event is prototypical of the future."
"Picture that in Central America or the Caribbean, which are just as likely," he said. "This is not distant, this is now. And we need to be preparing."
Other recent studies have shown that drought and scant water have already fueled civil conflicts in global hot spots like Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sudan, according to several recent studies.
This bodes ill, given projections that human-driven warming is likely to make some of the world's driest, poorest places drier still, experts said.
"The evidence is fairly clear that sharp downward deviations from normal rainfall in fragile societies elevate the risk of major conflict," said Marc Levy of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, which recently published a study on the relationship between climate and civil war.
Given that climate models project drops in rainfall in such places in a warming world, Mr. Levy said, "It seems irresponsible not to take into account the possibility that a world with climate change will be a more violent world when making judgments about how tolerable such a world might be."
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
20 Comments so far
Show AllThe problem is that the disgusting little man in the White House and his Bible-toting cohorts are actually looking forward to the end of civilization, and of course to making as much money off it as they possibly can.
Why do we have to prove that changing the atmosphere is bad before we can demand changes? Shouldn't they have to prove that changing the atmosphere isn't bad? And what about the Electric Car and the people who killed it? When are we going to hold the rich accountable for what they're doing to the world, to the poor, the environment, and other species? Lets name names: officers and principal shareholders of the major corporations that are running the show. Let's call them out and hold them each personally responsible.
Of course, global warming is a major threat to national security. Just as this government, and to a lesser extent, the past 4-5 administrations, is plunging this country into bankruptcy. An old gem of a book, Trading Places, written by an appointee of Reagan, turned critic, spoke of how military and "defense" myopia was permanently damaging this country's economy, and thus its capacity for future defense.
When will the lunatics in the White House and Pentagon figure this out? Current military spending must be cut by 80-90%. Only then can we free the capital to address long term issues of economic competitiveness, sustainable energy, sustainable food and competive advantage in sectors likely to make positive contributions to the country and the world in the future.
It's time to hold the people running these corporations personally responsible. Who runs Exxon? Who runs GM? Who runs Monsanto? Who are they? What are their names? Where do they live? How do we impress upon them the importance of not killing our planet?
I say we deliver the executives of the 10 largest carbon-producing industries to Somalia, Haiti, Sudan, Chad or the Australian outback without anything but clothes and a multi-tool.
Maybe they would understand the consequences of Global Warming if they thought they had to survive them.
I had a discussion with my father in law about this, who for some unknown reason, and despite his background in science and engineering, chooses to listen to Limbaugh on climate change rather than the world's scientists. I asked him what he would do if one of the astronauts on the space shuttle put a blindfold on, grabbed a ball-peen hammer and started floating around the cabin swinging at anything he came into contact with. Would he order that astronaut sedated and tied into his seat for the rest of the voyage? Yes, he agreed, without hesitation. So why, I asked him is it acceptable to do essentially the same thing with our planet, which is a system so complex, is the only world we are ever likely to have, and with a history of severe dislocations which have rendered life nearly extinct in the past when unknown variables changed the unknown equations? The best answer I can come up with is that no one is making a killing from hammering the shuttle's flight control systems, but many people make a hell of a lot swinging that hammer down here. Is it worth it to make a billion now and watch your grandchildren starve? Alas for our species...
Example from Limbaugh... "Of course the temperatures are high-IT'S SUMMER!" Creeping Jesus...
Funny, that NYT, not mentioning the growing DROUGHT in the UNITED STATES that's already matching Dust Bowl levels.
Probably nothing to worry about...
Marlow - I wish you would find out more about your father-in-law's take on global warming and tell us about it. Listen well to him and don't try to convert him. I think it could be important to understand where people - especially intelligent people - who don't believe what to us is incontrovertible fact - are coming from.
"The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military"
Wouldn't it be great if Bush would launch a preemptive "War on Global Warming" instead of waiting for the "mushroom cloud" of misery the writer describes.
It is utterly tragic that the country has faced some of the most serious challenges it has ever faced: the 9/11 attacks, Katrina, imminent threats posed by climate change, during the most evil, inept, corrupt, and downright dangerous administration in our history.
"The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military."
I wonder if Bushco would launch a preemptive 'War on Global Warming" in order to prevent the "mushroom cloud" of disaster the author describes.
So does this imply that the administration does in fact admit that global warming is a real threat? It is revealing that the planning is military, rather than creative and preventive. Of course preventive efforts would have "dire economic consequences," at least for those very powerful sectors of the economy that bought and paid for this pathetic administration.
I, and many other serious UFO enthusiasts, believe UFO technology could very well save this planet by taking us completely away from fossil fuel technology.
Check out what the former Canadian Defense Minister recently said:
In 2007, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Hellyer is demanding that world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change. "I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation ... that could be a way to save our planet," Hellyer told the paper. He also said that "We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough..."
The reality of global warming becomes more obvious every day of our lives, and tragically so.
Unfortunately the sycophants like Christopher Horner have taken liberty to pervert global warming by excoriating Al Gore's film labeling their spin as the inconvenient truths for Al Gore and all the typically Right winged rhetorical dross.
A fellow named Winter from "Human Events" cites global warming as "the Left's best chance to seize total control of our economy and political system" . He implies that the "Left", liberals, etc. have invented global warming to seize total control of our economy and political system, in other words, the Right delusionist see global warming as the Left's version of 9/11.
The people who take public transportation are paying more than their fair share of a solution that benefits everyone. freepublictransit.org
http://www.freepublictransit.org
"...human-driven warming of the climate poses risks to the national security of the United States..."
Oh, that's easy! We can just get our aircraft carrier attack groups to 'head off' the rising sea levels .....and we can use threats of pre-emptive strikes with WMD's to curtail the hurricane Katrinas.
Dunno about drought, though, but we're working on it..... can always invade Canada!!!
To paraphrase something I heard Kurt Vonnegut say on TV: "Human beings are a cancer on the face of the earth, and the earth's immune system is trying to fight back." Bingo.
It is odd how the article only mentioned other countries facing serious problems, there is already a water shortage in the SW usa. Strife could very well spark up right here, there are A LOT of people with guns in this country. What happens when agriculture and Los Angeles come head to head. There is no love between those two camps.
And, we could all have health care and free schooling, and work less hours with a quarter to half of the military's budget.
Bush and Cheney(and all their puppets and sick friends) should get the electric chair for all the people they have had murdered and the massive destruction to the environment they have promoted.
Military? What military? If there were enough new recruits to send to the middle East, the ones who are on their 3rd tour would not be there now.
And, MP, southern California agriculture gets most of its water from the Colorado River. Those folks with guns will be headed to Denver when they realize the CO government has figured out a way to shift the portion of the flow that travels down the western slopes of the Rockies back to the eastern slopes and Denver, Colorado Springs, etc.
The SW USA isn't in a drought, it's a dessert that's been irrigated by a water supply that is drying up. Do the research.
I agree about Mr. Vonnegut. We are out-of- control vermin.
From what I understand, a lot of the changes are natural, but all of this is sped up by us.
Thinking about this, the amount of people we have, if each one of us
were to be environmentally concious, could
the planet still sustain so many people?
On a different issue: Why are we concerned
with the economic fallout of fixing things?
Money should not enter into this. Money should not be in this at all. We are locked down in the boat, heading for the falls and people are wondering how much it'll cost to call somebody with a net.
This issue is too great for money, or religion or other nonsense.
And banning old -style light bulbs is a
fart in a wind storm.
Protecting our borders from desparate people isn't in the equation either.
Wars erupting over mass migration?
Didn't we evolve beyond that?
We really are a plague.