Selwyn Duke
The New American
May 16, 2014
The phrase “fighting climate change” has taken on new meaning, with the Department of Defense factoring consensus-based forecasts of a warmer planet into its military preparedness models.
Writes NBC News’ Bill Briggs:
US military and intelligence agencies are increasingly monitoring and preparing for how, when and where the consequences of a warmer planet will collide with national security, requiring the eventual need to deploy American troops to weather-torn lands.
…“For DoD, this is a mission reality, not a political debate,” said Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman. “The scientific forecast is for more Arctic ice melt, more sea-level rise, more intense storms, more flooding from storm surge, and more drought.[”]
“Those changes shape the future operating environment, help us predict missions we’ll have to undertake, and create challenges and constraints on how we operate on our bases,” Wright said. “We’re taking sensible measured steps to mitigate the mission risk posed by climate change.”
The problem, many critics would say, is that the DoD’s “mission reality” is based on the outcome of a “political debate” — not on sound science. Climate models that had predicted rising temperatures for the past couple of decades have proved faulty, as there has been no warming now for almost 18 years. Moreover, writes James Taylor at Human Events, “This year has been the coldest year in history through May 6,” and when summer officially arrives, “it better be a warm one if the United States is to avoid setting a new record for its coldest year ever.”
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