NRC Report Links Climate Change To National Security

WOOFYGOOFY writes "The NY Times and Voice Of America are reporting on a study by the U.S. National Research Council (PDF) which was released Friday linking global climate change to national security. The report, which was developed at the request of the C.I.A., characterizes the threats posed by climate change as 'similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks. 'Climate-driven crises could lead to internal instability or international conflict and might force the United States to provide humanitarian assistance or, in some cases, military force to protect vital energy, economic or other interests, the study said.' If the effect of unaddressed climate change is the functional equivalent of terrorist attacks on the nation, does the Executive Branch, as a matter of national security, have a duty and a right to begin to act unilaterally against climate change irrespective of what Congress currently believes?"

Comments

Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The report, which was developed at the request of the C.I.A., characterizes the threats posed by climate change as 'similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks'

That's because almost anything that comes to one's mind is more dangerous that terrorist attacks (e.g.: cars, coal power plant emissions, nicotin, alcohol...) Well, I guess alien invasion is slightly less risky. I'm willing to admit as much as that.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that, for the 'national security' types, the bigger issue is not so much the changing value of real estate, or even the cost of mopping up a few more hurricanes per decade; but the sort of really wacky social dysfunction that can be reasonably expected in the large areas of the world where people enjoy limited mobility, paltry incomes, and a somewhat tenuous record of liking us.

Even modest price shocks in the cost of essential food items cause the bottom billion or two to get(quite understandably) jumpy. Shifts in climate and precipitation are, of course, ideal causes for serious disruptions in agriculture, and likely a certain amount of mayhem, migration of desperate people to slightly less screwed places that really don't want them coming in(if you think nativist sentiment in Greece is on the rise now...), and so forth.

As an incumbent major power, that's the sort of thing that is unlikely to be fatal; but entirely likely to make dealings with large areas of the planet just that much messier, bloodier, and more expensive...

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I was talking about deaths per year caused by the respective issues.

I recently studied how many birds die annually by "hand of man" - as in, if we weren't here with the whole of our civilization, they wouldn't die. I wanted to know because of some people's arguments against wind energy because of the occasional bird deaths, and it turned out that one of the leading causes of man-caused bird deaths - in the US at least - are window panes. Specifically, window panes kill something like four to five orders of magnitude as many birds as wind turbines. Similar numbers apply to agriculture (fertilizers, pesticides), open air power lines, automobiles, and - of course - domestic and feral cats. Even if you take the wind power market expansion into account, it's not likely that wind turbines will ever be worthy mentioning to anyone actually caring about birds. And now, show me people willing to giving up windows on account of birds.

I suspect that the situation with humans is very much like this. There are many more deaths from other causes than terrorism on the US soil that could be prevented at a much more modest cost. The problem is that these deaths are not as flashy as airplanes driven into buildings, and therefore unlikely to attract the attention of an average citizen and voter.

Re:Greater threat than the terrorist attacks

[drinkypoo]

For developed nations, even the worst case predictions for global warming amount to little more than a rounding error in the GNP

You, sir, are on the bad drugs.

The worst-case predictions for global warming include the long-period flooding of all coastal cities. You think that's going to be little more than a rounding error if it happens?

In the long run possibly

[Chrisq]

The thing is you have to weigh up the possibilities of people starving in a century against the probability that a group of muzzies will bomb the subway next week. Whereas ideally you should counter both it is a lot easier for the government to get praise for finding another bomb factory than to carry out actions that might show effects in 20 years time.

Re:In the long run possibly

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Pigs are *not* racist. They eat just about anything (or anyone) you feed them with. Equal-opportunity digesters, so as to speak.

Perhaps scientists will gain some listeners

[h00manist]

After years of horrible persecution of scientists and accusing them of crimes for the results of their research and voicing their opinion, taking us back to the middle ages, perhaps now they will gain a bit more respect. But we're still far from paying them anything near what they deserve, anywhere in the world.

Why did it take...

[joocemann]

...over 20 years to conclude that which was obvious. If you were humble enough to trust experts, the impact of AGW was clear for a long time -- the drastic products of AGW are easy to estimate. If 7BN people can't do well right now, it only makes sense that environmental instability would push many into desperation and chaos.

Re:The answer is no. The question is bad.

[hey!]

Well, I don't know about "extremist", but "alarmist" might be better. "Sloppy" might be best of all.

That climate change has national security implications is kind of a "well, duh" proposition. Of course it has national security implications, through its potentially destabilizing effect on other nations at the very least. Climate change has a huge impact on the military due to its effect on vector borne infectious diseases. Only recently have historians begun to appreciate the huge and possibly decisive impact malaria had on the American Revolution, and to this day the US military has considerable public health efforts to protect the immunologically naive American troops, who grew up in a hygienic temperate environment, deployed in tropical or squalid conditions.

The executive branch has regulatory and monitoring functions assigned to it by Congress, and considerable leeway in implementing policy within the constraints established by legislation. For example it may be tasked with monitoring the spread of agricultural pests -- a topic closely related in several ways to climate change. Within that function it can draft regulations and propose programs which it then submits budget requests to Congress.

So the executive branch has considerable influence on how or even whether the US government responds to the prospect of climate change. It's hardly extreme to suggest the executive branch should have a policy stance toward it. It's just wooly-headed to compare it to terrorism, a totally different kind of security concern with different causes, different effects, and very different planning horizons.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[Anonymous Coward]

"Draconian?"

Really?

I always was curious as to how you climate change denialists imagine this ever dark-and-sinister "green agenda." Do you just imagine some dimly-lit, raspy figure tenting his fingers and intoning in a rattling hiss: "Yessss, yessss, just a few parts per cubic inch fewer of carbon dioxide and then they will all payyyyy. Evvvvery time I hear the lamentful wail of a businessssssssman who must adhere to my lunatic whimsssss, I am set upon with a mighty erectionnnnnn. Yessssss..."

Seriously dude, running your car with a slightly lower-volume engine and not being allowed to straight-up vomit toxic gas into the air without paying a fine isn't exactly the same as unlawful search and seizure. I can kind of appreciate the notion that using the specter of global warming as a threat is bothersome to people who don't "believe" in global warming, but lower pollution is pretty well agreed-upon as better for the environment and, you know, people.

If you really think I'm being glib, please tell me what the awful, unthinkable measures you, your family, your friends, or even your employers have undergone that have just torn their lives asunder so as to condemn this apparently-fabricated-by-the-majority-of-the-scientific-community "agenda."

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[bunratty]

Like switching to energy sources not derived from fossil fuels? How is that draconian? We have to do it at some point anyway because fossil fuels will last only the next few centuries. We might as well switch to alternatives before supply goes down and energy prices go way up. Oh, wait, too late for that. Well, let's switch ASAP before energy prices go sky high.

Re:Similar to the threat of terrorist attacks

[symbolset]

The solution may be closer than we thought.

Re:There's one plan

[Genda]

Hydro has been investigated to death. It will never provide more than a fraction of the nation's power needs and has significant environmental problems of its own. There are a huge number of exciting energy and fresh water technologies showing up. Great ideas that beginning to not only look feasible, but profitable. Check out this month's article on Cold Fusion in Discover magazine. It seems a number of breakthroughs in CF including a theory as to what is actually happening is getting a very good reception from applied physicists. There is solid evidence that anchored lighter than air win turbines could harvest 100x more power than ground based wind turbines. Solar cells have passed 33% efficiency, and new technologies promise cheap ubiquitous solar collection on an infinitude of surfaces. OTECs placed around the world in deep water along the equator could produce huge electrical energy, vast amounts of fresh water, and equally vast supplies of seafood (diverse ocean based aquiculture.) This doesn't even mention that being on the equator, they would be perfect launch sites for space traffic. We can even take the energy we produce now and us it to generate hydrogen, methanol, and petroleum directly from water and CO2 in the atmosphere giving us unlimited supplies of carbon neutral fuel. By the way, anyone who's worked with sodium hydroxide knows how much water is can suck out of the air. Solar powered portable water supplies wll soon be sent to the driest places in Africa to save millions of lives. When we look for solutions to making the world a richer place, rather than how can "I" enrich "Myself" to the world's detriment, we all become richer.

We now have the means in our grasp to resolve the many problems facing humanity, however it would demand giving up petty political bickering, religious conflict, national self interest, but most of all prying the white knuckled, crypt keeper death grip of the bankers and mega-corporations from our governments and and financial resources. A very few men of vision and courage, backed by global regions and working in concert could forever transform what was possible for being human, but we'd all have to stop being obsessed with our pasts or some silly apocalypse and focus instead on the future. Perhaps even a future worth living in for all people.

Re:Are the nuts right.

[sjames]

I'm not really a fan of the executive acting unilaterally, but with an obstructionist House whose committee on science, space, and technology includes a member who claims that evolution and the big bang theory are "all lies straight from the pit of hell" and another that claims that women can't get pregnant from "legitimate rape", I can understand the temptation.

no spin zone

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Let's be clear. The people equating statistically improbable disasters - asteroids, aliens all that- to the absolute certain fact that global warming will, if left unchecked for too long, deconstruct civilization are engaging in a type of self soothing via fuzzy thinking. This is what denial is.

The people denying that the threat is imminent and reasoning that it is therefore amenable to current political processes are doing something a little more subtle.

They are creating an imaginary causal linkage between three phenomena which are, in reality, causally unlinked. This is therefore a type of magical thinking.

The first phenomena is the pace at which global warming will proceed. No one knows with certainty how quickly it will proceed or what effects each step of the progression will have on factors effecting national security. What we do know is it's worse than we thought, proceeding faster than we projected.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/02/23/203730/mit-doubles-global-warming-projections/

That pace is in no way related to the second phenomena , the ability of a (gerrymandered) minority of politicians to block urgently needed action at the federal level. Funded by and beholden to the now-classifiable-as-genocidal gas and oil industries, scientifically ignorant and proud of it, the pace of warming is in no way effected by their continued inaction, and nothing about their inaction obliges global warming to back off for our collective sake.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/03/17/203822/media-copenhagen-global-warming-impacts-worst-case-ipcc/?mobile=nc

The third phenomena is what level of ecological disaster is going to serve as the trigger point at which the denier population capitulates to reality and assents to urgent, sweeping federal action. Because that level of ecological disaster both exists and will be realized sooner or later.

But that point is in no way causally related to that other point in time, the point of no return, where given our then-current or achievable level of technology, we'll still be able to limit the effects of global warming in order to preserve the habitability of the planet.

There's nothing to say that deniers won't come around too late. There's no guarantee that the level of ecological disaster sufficient to finally get through to deniers will appear on a schedule sufficient for us to solve the problem.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=349

To think vague things like- eventually everyone will come around and then the political process will kick in in time for us to save ourselves- is magical thinking. The forces controlling the pace of, and political resistance to, global warming are unrelated with respect to the time frame needed to act.

The original question is rhetorical but only in the way opposite to that asserted by the deniers here. It IS a fact that the threat posed by global warming falls under the purview of the executive branch who WILL be empowered and in fact have a duty to act unilaterally, without Congressional oversight or approval, in order to preserve the national security of the United States. The only question is when will that time come and how will we know it? Is it now? A little while from now? When it's too late to do any good?

We just squeaked by an election in which one of the parties' candidates was threatening to pipeline in tar sands from Canada and light them on fire. We already know that, if we light on fire all the oil we current have already drilled and sitting waiting to be sold, it's game over for the environment and ourselves. Drilling for more, spending money to obtain yet more and dirtier oil and th