Fortune Magazine has an article entitled
"The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare".
(alternate Diary title: "Global Warming-Related Program Activities")
some excerpts:
...The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a decade--like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies--thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia--it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.
Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in the past with shocking speed--in some cases, just a few years.
...recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's "Yoda"--a balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized influence on defense policy.
...The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping strategies.
...Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America.
...history shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding, they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations, invading Russia--which is weakened by a population that is already in decline--for access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land.
...Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.
The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"--the natural resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the crisis--it is too widespread and unfolds too fast.
As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human life.
...At least some federal thought leaders may be starting to perceive climate change less as a political annoyance and more as an issue demanding action.
Andy Marshall? That's bringing out the heavy artillery.
I've always divided global warming skeptics into two main groups.
- "Anything the godless, socialist environmentalists believe in must be wrong".
- "I neither know nor care whether global warming exists - I only know that if government enacts policies as if it's real, that will inconvenience me or harm my short-term financial interests".
Those in the second camp drive the current head-in-the-sand policy. They always assumed if warming occurred, they'd be safely dead. Now they have to start planning adaptive strategies, like investing in the development of city-size dustbusters (here in OK, anyway), or in real estate that will become coastline sooner than anyone expected.
Still too much to hope it would spur investment in clean energy technology - we could create jobs (heck, whole industries), and save the planet too. Maybe if our global-corporate masters thought of it as saving customers instead...
I recall reading several years ago that the insurance industry takes global warming seriously, too - just imagine the increase in weather-related claims.
That darn rogue DOD. First the Army War College debunks the Iraq invasion. Now they're caught taking global warming seriously. This can only make it easier to create debate and steer it in the proper direction.