Posted on Oct 15, 2014
The ways global climate change threats may affect servicemembers
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Climate change is now being looked at as a national security threat. Rising global temperatures, increasing sea levels and intensifying weather activities will challenge global stability, says Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. The changes could even lead to food and water shortages, disease and clashes over refugees and resources.
On Monday, Hagel unveiled a “Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap” to several defense ministers at an international meeting in Peru. He stressed leaders inside and outside the military need to set aside the intense political debate over the issue. Hagel says our armed forces have to prepare for all possible threats to keep our country secure. This includes our military bracing for a global warming crisis that will cause sea levels to rise 12 to 18 inches over the next 20 to 50 years.
Flooding and erosion will threaten military installations’ infrastructure and training areas, including port facilities such as San Diego, Hawaii and Norfolk, Virginia. The number of humanitarian assistance missions will increase. Climate changes can create new health risks by expanding infectious disease zones and boosting health service demands. Bases in the West will have to consider new water management programs to handle droughts, as dust can ruin military equipment and increase equipment costs.
Hagel outlined a list of potential changes for the Defense Department, including how all branches will be affected:
Marine Corps: Rising sea levels could make it harder to mount amphibious landings.
Air Force: Changing weather patterns could make it more difficult to fly for investigation and surveillance missions.
Navy: New ship technology might be needed to maneuver in the Arctic icy waters, in facing new zones of competition as new fossil fuel and mineral deposits become accessible.
Army: Soldiers may need to help manage instability caused by flooding in densely populated coastal areas, where mass-migration creates chaos and a breeding ground for extremist groups.
National Guard: More severe weather, such as hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires, will cause serious damage that will require more support from members.
The Pentagon is assessing the vulnerability of more than 7,000 bases and installations around the world. As the assessment winds down, leaders are reviewing all budget plans, war game scenarios and off-the-shelf operational contingency plans to determine if revisions are needed in light of projected impact of global warming.
Can key decision-makers put aside their political differences and focus on preparing for climate changes? Given what Hagel has outlined, how will preparing for global warming threats affect you and your service?
On Monday, Hagel unveiled a “Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap” to several defense ministers at an international meeting in Peru. He stressed leaders inside and outside the military need to set aside the intense political debate over the issue. Hagel says our armed forces have to prepare for all possible threats to keep our country secure. This includes our military bracing for a global warming crisis that will cause sea levels to rise 12 to 18 inches over the next 20 to 50 years.
Flooding and erosion will threaten military installations’ infrastructure and training areas, including port facilities such as San Diego, Hawaii and Norfolk, Virginia. The number of humanitarian assistance missions will increase. Climate changes can create new health risks by expanding infectious disease zones and boosting health service demands. Bases in the West will have to consider new water management programs to handle droughts, as dust can ruin military equipment and increase equipment costs.
Hagel outlined a list of potential changes for the Defense Department, including how all branches will be affected:
Marine Corps: Rising sea levels could make it harder to mount amphibious landings.
Air Force: Changing weather patterns could make it more difficult to fly for investigation and surveillance missions.
Navy: New ship technology might be needed to maneuver in the Arctic icy waters, in facing new zones of competition as new fossil fuel and mineral deposits become accessible.
Army: Soldiers may need to help manage instability caused by flooding in densely populated coastal areas, where mass-migration creates chaos and a breeding ground for extremist groups.
National Guard: More severe weather, such as hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires, will cause serious damage that will require more support from members.
The Pentagon is assessing the vulnerability of more than 7,000 bases and installations around the world. As the assessment winds down, leaders are reviewing all budget plans, war game scenarios and off-the-shelf operational contingency plans to determine if revisions are needed in light of projected impact of global warming.
Can key decision-makers put aside their political differences and focus on preparing for climate changes? Given what Hagel has outlined, how will preparing for global warming threats affect you and your service?
Climate Change
Command Post
Environment
Posted 11 y ago
Responses: 48
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With ISIS (ISIL, IS, whatever) increasing their influence, and apparent relevance in the Arab region, the uncertainty of the role of the military in Africa regarding the Ebola threat, and ALL of this in the face of persistent reductions in military spending through sequestration that are eroding our readiness, how in hell can "global warming" rise to the top of the Defense Secretary's talking points?
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PO1 Bernard Killinger
Another question. Why does the Rally Point Team focus so many articles on leftist, BS?
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SSgt (Join to see)
And with all these drastic cuts, heathcare (reformed)Ebola, The Middle East conflicts how does he have the time.
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SFC Michael Hasbun
Is terrorism really more of a threat than the planet becoming uninhabitable? If we don't worry about our planet, there won't be any other considerations... At least not for our species...
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Since climate change is a naturally occuring cycle of our planet, it won't. It'll take a few hundred, if not thousand, years to have any real profound effect and then after a few more millenia, our future ancestors will be crying about how cold it's getting and call it global freezing.
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Climate change is a fact, man caused climate "disruption" or "global warming" is a bunch of nonsense that is completely unsupported by actual data from any non-government funded or non-partisan entity.
This false premise will affect the military in a negative as we waste more than the usual amount of money on unsustainable "green" fuels and handing out R&D grants for solar powered tactical vehicles. Pay raises will become a thing of the past as the force becomes ever more degraded and hollowed out until we reach total combat ineffectiveness. Then we all sit around and smoke dope, eat granola, and question our gender, all while wearing hemp sandals until our country is taken from us by our foreign enemies. The domestic enemies have already won while we ignored our oaths and let the defense of the Constitution take second place to political correctness.
This false premise will affect the military in a negative as we waste more than the usual amount of money on unsustainable "green" fuels and handing out R&D grants for solar powered tactical vehicles. Pay raises will become a thing of the past as the force becomes ever more degraded and hollowed out until we reach total combat ineffectiveness. Then we all sit around and smoke dope, eat granola, and question our gender, all while wearing hemp sandals until our country is taken from us by our foreign enemies. The domestic enemies have already won while we ignored our oaths and let the defense of the Constitution take second place to political correctness.
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SSgt (Join to see)
SFC (Join to see) That is your opinion and other like-minded sycophants with a political end in sight. If Einstein and other scientists had reservations about their own work, then we can call nothing fact in science. Even Gravity and let's say the quadratic equations. Most of the more complicated theories have holes and any HONEST scientist knows that.
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SFC (Join to see)
Right, climatologists are mostly NOT honest. Especially if honesty about man causing climate change doesn't fit the narrative that supports the agencies that provide the money that funds their research. If you consider deliberately skewing data, ignoring facts, and outright lying to be research. I'm all for green sustainable energy, I want to put a wind and solar setup at my house. But it has to actually work, and be sustainable. Large scale solar and wind power wouldn't exist if it wasn't subsidized, which is why it should be allowed to go under until they can figure out how to make it efficient AND affordable. Making conventional sources of power generation prohibitively expensive hurts us all both with higher electrical and gas costs, and with higher taxes to pay for subsidies for non-viable green power. Solyndra ring a bell? Forcing the military to waste money on green fuels when we are already cash strapped is just adding insult to injury, because the military doesn't have a choice.
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PO1 John Pokrzywa
We all know the data was being fudged intentionally in favor of global warming theory by UN funded scientists. Their emails were hacked, and they were caught red handed. However, in typical fashion, the media outrage was that UN scientists' emails were being hacked, not that they were lying.
Go figure. Doesn't make sense, until one starts seeing all the new "green" taxes and new regulations being made, in honor of this new false idol they are propping up in front of everyone. It's money and power, and very little to do with what they say it is.
Go figure. Doesn't make sense, until one starts seeing all the new "green" taxes and new regulations being made, in honor of this new false idol they are propping up in front of everyone. It's money and power, and very little to do with what they say it is.
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Why is the temperature of the Great Lakes 6 degrees lower than normal, we try to rationalize what the weather does, in 1975, it was an Ice Age coming , then global warming, then because it was not warming, Climate Change. My advice, follow the money, Al Gore made millions convincing people by the year 2000 the Earth would overheat and we all would die, we are all still here
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SGT (Join to see)
And let's not forget Gore got the Nobel Peace Prize for that presentation. He managed to beat out people who had done such minor things as smuggling hundreds of Jewish children out of the ghettos. It's all political these days.
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SSgt (Join to see)
Jacob Hollander - With all due respect, you've no idea what you are talking about. Meteorologist Larry Olson
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I think that it would be just as you posted, our missions will become much more dynamic. I do think that climate change should be more of a concern, however, I do not think that it is that big of a matter of national security as some would have us believe. It's a cycle that the Earth goes through, with the melting and refreezing of the polar caps and such. I also think that we give ourselves as humans too much credit in the regard of being the cause of 'Global Warming.'
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I'm going to suspend disbelief and go with the assumption that climate change is happening...for whatever reason...not going to get into a politiclly charged debate. Climate changes. Been happening for thousands of years. So...what this means for us in a Contemporary Operating Environment where large, unemployed, disenfranchized young males are being drawn to urban areas in search of employment and welfare, we will see an increase in the competition for scarce resources. This scarcity will become epedemic in some areas of the world with booming populations (Africa, India, China, etc), lack of resources will lead to instability and the creation of insurgencies or at least organized criminal activity which may be focused on the destabilization of local and federal governments. Throw on top of this the cultural clashes when tribe or culturally based groups of disenfranchized youth pour into an area normally controlled by a political and cultural elite and you have the makings of a cuture war based in crime, warlords, and terrorism. If these localized issues effect the global market and US interests, it is very likely that the United States will take action in one form or another. We have seen this since Bosnia in 1995 throughout the world. As resources become scarce and cultures clash along fictitious boundaries created in the 1920's and 1940's, we will find ourselve more and more involved in "keeping the ship from tipping over." Resources matter. If climate changes the availability of resources, we will be affected.
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COL (Join to see)
Oh...and here's another thing. It doesn't matter in the least if you "believe" in climate change or not. Your opinion doesn't matter. If the political elite of our nation believe and take actions which affect the National Security Strategy, then the United States Military WILL be affected. The question is how do you think it's going to happen. I could believe that angry tundra-wookies are going to attack the Kiebler cookie factory, but if congress and the President doesn't believe it...it isn't going to affect the service.
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COL (Join to see)
Agreed. Which is why I didn't specify a belief one way or the other, because my opinion doesn't matter. It's become political. Not talking about political elitism...talking about the political elite. Common term in comparative politics and other realms of study when we talk about civil-military relations and the duty of the military to remain subservient to the people...and thus their political appointees. We certainly don't need to be worrying about climate engineering, but my statement was that the effects we see due to the change in climate (happening for whatever reason), will have an impact.
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TSgt (Join to see)
Climate is a part of our jobs as uniformed men and women. So it really should not matter. We have the National Guard and various versions of state guards and emergency management agencies for this exact reason too. And it is also the reason we have certain kinds of extremely durable equipment that politicians accuse us of spending too much money on.
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Since I operate at the tactical level, and live in reality, I expect zero impact to me or my job.
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SSgt (Join to see)
LTC (Join to see) Of course and well stated. I've been a Meteorologist for at least 30-35 years and I literally chafe at the misinformation, pseudo-science and malarkey that masquerades as science. I hate duplicity and duplicitous persons even more.
For those who defer to the experts, many of those in the 70s predicted an ice age by now. There are so many default points (actually talking points) that needs are overlooked and dogma embraced. Consensus my butt, many are philatelists, animal husbandry experts and dishwashers at various universities.
For those who defer to the experts, many of those in the 70s predicted an ice age by now. There are so many default points (actually talking points) that needs are overlooked and dogma embraced. Consensus my butt, many are philatelists, animal husbandry experts and dishwashers at various universities.
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