Trump, Respond to the Facts.
This memorandum establishes a framework and directs Federal departments and agencies (agencies) to perform certain functions to ensure that climate change-related impacts are fully considered in the development of national security doctrine, policies, and plans.
— source: The White House; For Immediate Release; Sept 21, 2016:
Sept 21, 2016: prepared by the National Intelligence Council and coordinated with the US Intelligence Community: Implications for US National Security of Anticipated Climate Change:
Key Points ~~~ Long-term changes in climate will produce more extreme weather events and put greater stress on critical Earth systems like oceans, freshwater, and biodiversity. These in turn will almost certainly have significant effects, both direct and indirect, across social, economic, political, and security realms during the next 20 years. These effects will be all the more pronounced as people continue to concentrate in climate-vulnerable locations, such as coastal areas, water-stressed regions, and ever-growing cities.
Effects of Climate Change on National Security: Possible Pathways ~~~ Climate change and its resulting effects are likely to pose wide-ranging national security challenges for the United States and other countries over the next 20 years through the following pathways:
Threats to the stability of countries.
Heightened social and political tensions.
Adverse effects on food prices and availability.
Increased risks to human health.
Negative impacts on investments & economic competitiveness.
Potential climate discontinuities & secondary surprises.
Effects of Climate Change on National Security: Possible Timeframes ~~~ The complexity of the climate, the uncertainties of modeling, and human choices make it difficult to project when and where specific severe weather events and other effects will affect national security most significantly. However, climate models do not diverge significantly on their estimates of future surface temperatures or on changes in other climate variables during the next 20 years, particularly when fluctuations in the climate system are considered (see chart on page 12).
Now, the effects resulting from changing trends in extreme weather events suggest that climate-related disruptions are under way.
Over the next five years, the security risks for the United States linked to climate change will arise primarily from distinct extreme weather events and from the exacerbation of currently strained conditions, like water shortages.
Over the next 20 years, in addition to increasingly disruptive extreme weather events, the projected effects of climate change will play out in the combination of multiple weather disturbances with broader, systemic changes, including the effects of sea level rise.
National Intelligence Council (NIC) report:
The NIC report warns of both the very near-term security implications of climate change – including those that arise from “distinct extreme weather events” in the next five years – as well as likely risks on the twenty-year timescale associated with “broader systemic changes” such as sea level rise.
The report affirms what a growing national security consensus has made clear: climate change presents a “strategically-significant risk” to the United States. Indeed, the NIC report notes that the effects of climate change are already underway, and “are likely to pose wide-ranging national security challenges for the United States and other countries over the next 20 years.”
Sept. 2016: Climate Security Consensus Project Statement:
“Our military and intelligence leadership have recognized under both the George W. Bush and the Obama Administrations, that climate change will present real and costly risks to our national security and that the effects are going to get worse if we don’t do something about it very soon. As General Douglas MacArthur warned about the dangers of unpreparedness for war, we don’t want to be too late.” —Geoffrey Kemp, Senior Director for Regional Security, Center for the National lnterest, former Special Assistant to President Reagan for Nat’l Security Affairs
At the heart of the statement is a concern about risks to regions of the world of strategic significance to the United States – risks that can contribute to political and financial instability on an international scale, as well as maritime insecurity. Two key determinations from the consensus group include:
- Stresses resulting from climate change can increase the likelihood of intra or international conflict, state failure, mass migration, and the creation of additional ungoverned spaces, across a range of strategically-significant regions, including but not limited to the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, the Indo-Asia-Pacific, and the Arctic regions;
- The impacts of climate change will place significant strains on international financial stability through contributing to supply line disruptions for major global industries in the manufacturing, energy, agriculture and water sectors, disrupting the viability of the insurance industry, and generally increasing the political and financial risks of doing business in an increasingly unstable global environment.
2014-05-08 National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change; May 2014; CNA Military Advisory Board (MAB): “Major findings: Actions by the United States and the international community have been insufficient to adapt to the challenges associated with projected climate change. Strengthening resilience to climate impacts already locked into the system is critical, but this will reduce long-term risk only if improvements in resilience are accompanied by actionable agreements on ways to stabilize climate change.
MAB member General Gordon Sullivan, United States Army, Retired, has noted: “Speaking as a soldier, we never have 100 percent certainty. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen ...” ...[...]…
We must have Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and their ilk as the most powerful Senators in the 115th Congress. The only way for that to happen is for Hillary Clinton and all down-ticket Democrats to be victorious. Otherwise Sanders, et al., will be less influential than paper tigers.
50 Million registered Millennial Voters must wake up to the reality that they have to actually go on down to the polling place and actually vote!