Lethal Trajectories - Michael Conley [204]
The IPCC Report became a galvanizing force for those opposed to the notion of climate-change and the proactive steps needed to mitigate it. The IPCC was ill-prepared to respond to the “climate-gate” charges of bogus science leveled against it. The so-called climate hoaxers suggested the data was inconclusive and that even the scientific community was badly divided on the issue. Ergo, they claimed, we should do nothing about it until the data was all in. Public opinion polls showed that their strategy was working, at least to the extent that the public was less sure of the validity of climate-change or its prognosis.
Interestingly, climate scientists—97 percent of them firm in the belief that climate-change was happening and of significant anthropogenic origin—showed signs of organizing with a greater willingness to respond to and even challenge their critics. IPCC post-mortems also revealed that while a few small parts of the scientific process might have been marginal, the overall conclusions were in no way changed. The ensuing challenge to the scientific community to respond with new levels of transparency, more encouragement of public discourse, and greater efforts to secure better information through new satellite programs and data-processing protocols will undoubtedly have a positive effect. The climate-change trajectories portrayed in the book assume a continued deterioration along the lines projected by the overall climate science community.
Climate warnings: Much of the climate debate today centers on the Earth’s temperature trends and the validity of the temperature-taking process. While the 1-degree-Fahrenheit increase in temperature since 1970 is significant, it might be more revealing to focus on “reading” what the Earth is telling us instead of fixating only on its temperature and surrounding processes. The composite picture is alarming and difficult to explain away as a mere cyclical aberration, a result of sunspots, or some other conjecture.
The following chart highlights just four of the more noteworthy and observable patterns and does not include such observations as changing ecosystems, loss of arable land due to desertification, depletion of carbon sinks due to deforestation, and health issues related to water and air quality or insect-borne infestations.
Climate-change and National Security: The U.S. military and intelligence agencies take climate-change and its threat to national security very seriously. The Joint Operating Environment—2010 Report, used for military planning, lists climate-change as one of the ten trends most likely to affect the joint military forces. The CIA recently opened the Center on Climate-change and National Security to focus on climate issues and threats, and climate-change is now a regular part of the National Intelligence Estimate. A general theme is that climate-change is a threat multiplier that must be taken into account in all planning.
The correlation between changing climate patterns and national security includes threats to political stability in countries most susceptible to climate-change risks, notably many in Africa and Asia. Potential threats include disputes over natural resources such as freshwater and arable crop land, rising sea levels in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, and mass migrations as people leave uninhabitable lands for new territory—often crossing territorial borders. Some examples:
The Himalayan ice melts and related floods and water shortages could be particularly devastating to Asian nations dependent on water from that range. Three of these countries, Pakistan, India, and China, have nuclear capabilities. Freshwater is also a flash