Tim Gallaudet
Over the past two years, the Biden Administration’s Department of Defense (DoD) has directed the U.S. military to support Executive Order (EO) 14008 Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. As the global security situation seems to deteriorate by the day, it is worth asking the question, “Are the DoD’s actions to address climate change in the nation’s best interest?”
To answer this question, first consider the DoD Climate Adaptation Plan which was released in September 2021. Curiously, this was nearly two months before the release of the DoD Climate Risk Analysis. Risk analyses are a standard part of the military operational planning process, so the sequencing of these two documents is suspect. More concerning in the latter is the complete absence of citations of peer-reviewed scientific research regarding the climatic trends it identifies. In fact, the DoD Climate Risk Analysis presents no actual analysis at all and instead simply asserts a range of security implications resulting from climate change.
The DoD Climate Risk Analysis also characterizes climate change as an “existential” threat. Despite the persistent alarmism coming from the media, the Administration, and the United Nations, this is an unfounded claim which assumes that (a) we know with certainly that widespread and extreme changes will occur, and (b) our species will be unable to adapt unless we take action to stop them by drastically reducing the greenhouse gas emissions which are causing them. Both are problematic. Climate projections are rife with uncertainty, and even the Biden Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has recently adopted lower emissions scenarios that are far more likely.
An apparent influence on the DoD’s approach is the extreme emissions scenario known as Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5, which refers to the concentration of carbon that delivers global warming at an average of 8.5 watts per square meter across the planet. RCP 8.5 is the highest of other lower emissions scenarios introduced in 2014 within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). Because climate research results using this high emissions scenario are often dramatic, the media and many policy makers point to the often-outlandish headlines they generate. Such results are not only implausible, but they also mislead many in the public who lack the scientific expertise to discern their validity.
This is not to say that the DoD should ignore changes in the Earth’s climate. There is broad consensus among the scientific community regarding several current and projected climatic trends affecting the military. These include increases in flooding in the Southeast U.S., heatwaves around the globe, and melting of sea ice in the Arctic. On the other hand, several inferences in the DoD documents are flat out wrong. For example, occurrences of typhoons and the most extreme weather in the U.S. – landfalling hurricanes – have shown no increase over the past century. The same holds true for wildfire frequency in the U.S. over the past four decades.
The Pentagon’s presumption of a board increase in all types of climate hazards is too imprecise to support its conclusion that they will exacerbate instability in any region. Highly specific, peer-reviewed research regarding a given region, country, and locality needs to be assessed in terms of large and fine scale climatic trends in phenomena such as storm frequency, rainfall rate, flooding occurrence, drought persistence, temperature patterns, sea ice extent, and sea state statistics. Then, by considering the interaction with other geophysical characteristics (e.g., terrain, bathymetry, vegetation, etc.), as well as socioeconomic, geopolitical, and cultural factors, a potentially useful climate risk assessment can be developed.
Lastly, the DoD’s emphasis on emissions reductions is misguided. I do not dispute that increasing the use of renewables while maintaining energy independence is necessary for our national, natural, and economic security. For our military, however, emissions reductions are a dangerous distraction at a time when threat levels are so high. China is openly challenging the United States in every corner of the globe, Russia is continuing to wage war against Ukraine on NATO’s doorsteps. North Korea is only escalating its ballistic missile provocations, and Iran is persisting in its destabilizing influence in the Middle East. None of these security risks is made significantly worse by actual changes in our Earth’s climate.
Instead of attempting to tackle climate change, the DoD needs to target climate resilience and adaptation, which can only be done through preparedness for severe weather, flooding, and temperature extremes. These are the climate events that impact operations and installations, and barely mentioned in the DoD climate directives is the best way to be ready for them: improving the U.S. military’s capability to characterize and predict ocean and atmospheric conditions with advanced sensors, models, and decision support tools.
Our armed forces must be able to fight and win against our largest and most likely threats. Climate change is not one of them. By moving away from militarily irrelevant emissions reductions and instead advancing weather readiness, the Pentagon can address climate with the clarity needed to meet its national security mandates for the 21st century.
Rear Admiral (ret.) Tim Gallaudet is the CEO of Ocean STL Consulting, LLC, former acting and deputy administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and former acting undersecretary and assistant secretary of Commerce. Prior to NOAA, he served as an oceanographer in the U.S. Navy completing his career as the commander of the Navy Meteorology and Oceanography Command and director of the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change.
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