Morano's Eyes Wide Shut
Looks like Marc Morano is steering clear of the U.S. military’s acceptance of climate change. You won’t find any big, bold headlines on Climate Depot about how the Pentagon is planning for a warmer world:
Climate change will affect DoD in two broad ways. First, climate change will shape the operating environment, roles, and missions that we undertake. The U.S. Global Change Research Program, composed of 13 federal agencies, reported in 2009 that climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world, including the United States and its coastal waters. Among these physical changes are increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the oceans and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt and alterations in river flows.
Assessments conducted by the intelligence community indicate that climate change could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to poverty, environmental degradation and the further weakening of fragile governments. Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.
The seriousness with which the U.S. intelligence apparatus and the Pentagon take climate change is an inconvenient truth for Morano–and skeptics. As I’ve said before, it’s much easer to whack Al Gore or the IPCC than four star generals. The institutional acceptance of climate change by the U.S military is a hard thing to deal with over at Climate Depot. Much easier to ignore, right Marc? C’mon, surely, you can think up some headline about how the Pentagon has been bamboozled by the great global warming hoax?
Well said. I suspect we’ll be waiting for a while…
1. The military does as ordered by it Commander-in-Chief. Subordinates balk at their peril.
2. The military has thousands of scenario plans. Many even less likely to occur than global warming.
What John said –
Making a big deal out of this is simply grasping at straws. I’ve been (in the far distant past) peripherally involved with wargaming scenarios that would be jawdropping , especially to with little knowledge of the military.
This kind of gaming should only be taking seriously if the military starts making massive funding requests for specific equipment that would be useable only in very hot climates. Oh, yeah – Iraq is hot, isn’t it. Guess that won’t work, will it.
How about when they start dumping their cold weather gear on the surplus market? Let me know when you see that happen. 🙂