Climate Change Threatens National Security
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Climate change poses national security threats according to the military. Rising global temperatures are due to increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere from human activity. The military is concerned about climate change exacerbating instability in several regions of geopolitical importance. It could increase humanitarian needs and threaten military operations through impacts like changing weather patterns, rising sea levels endangering coastal bases, and pressure on resources. The military treats climate change risks seriously and prepares for possible security consequences even with some uncertainty in climate projections.
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Climate Change Threatens National Security
- 1. Climate Change and National Security American Security Project
- 2. INTRODUCTION: THE SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
- 3. The Earth is Warming Changes in global surface temperatures since 1880
- 4. The Earth is Warming Average Surface Temperature by decade since the 1880s
- 5. The Climate has always changed…
- 6. 10,000 Years of Stability Global Temperature Changes Since 10,000 BC5
- 7. We are no longer stable Global Temperature Changes the last 2000 years
- 8. So- why is the Temperature Increasing?
- 9. So- why is the Temperature Increasing? Increasing Concentrations of CO2
- 10. The Science is Definitive
- 11. Objections are Political, not Scientific
- 12. Result of Increasing Concentration of CO2: Global Warming
- 13. The Threats of Climate Change
- 14. The Military Worries about the Threats of Climate Change “The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world.”
- 15. The Military Worries about the Threats of Climate Change “A changing climate will have real impacts on our military and the way it executes its missions.” • Increased humanitarian assistance and disaster relief • Installations vulnerable to rising sea levels • Droughts and wildfires threaten training activities • Supply chains could be threatened • Ensuring equipment works under more extreme weather conditions
- 16. Militaries Around the World Worry About the Threat of Climate Change
- 17. Why Does the Military Worry About Climate Change? • “Accelerant of Instability” • “Threat Multiplier” • New “Hot Spots” for Instability
- 18. Global “Hot Spots” • A global issue that will be felt at the regional level. • How these local changes in weather and climate affect security in each region will depend on local responses.
- 19. Hot Spots: South Asia
- 20. Hot Spots: The Pacific
- 21. Hot Spots: The Middle East Fuel and Water are central to Mideast Operations
- 22. Hot Spots: The Middle East The Key Dams of Iraq – If you control water in the Middle East, you control the government.
- 23. Hot Spots: The Middle East The Syria and Iraqi Drought, 2006-2010
- 24. Hot Spots: Sub Saharan Africa
- 25. Hot Spots: The United States of America Coastal Threats Extreme Weather
- 26. Hot Spots: The United States of America Military Bases Infrastructure
- 27. Hot Spots: The United States of America Energy Agriculture
- 28. The Military’s Solution: Risk Management • There is no absolute certainty for climate predictions. • But - the military does not wait until there is 100% certainty. • On the battlefield, waiting for certainty means it is already too late. Cheney’s “1% Doctrine”
- 29. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- Joseph Fourrier John Tyndall Svante Arrhenius – who received the Nobel Prize in 1903
- Source: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “GISS Surface Temperature Analysis.” Available at: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ (accessed April 11, 2014). Line plot of global mean land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with the base period 1951-1980. The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates. [This is an update of Fig. 1A inHansen et al. (2006).]
- Source: WMO, A Decade of Climate Extremes, Summary Report, http://library.wmo.int/pmb_ged/wmo_1119_en.pdf “Decadal global combined surface-air temperature over land and sea-surface temperature (°C) obtained from the average over the three independent datasets maintained by the UK Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, in the United Kingdom (HadCRU), NOAA-National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA-GISS). The horizontal grey line indicates the longterm average value for 1961–1990 (14°C).
- The Earth’s climate has always changed; that is not in dispute. Carbon dioxide concentration, global temperatures, and sea level have naturally varied, in close correlation with each other, over the last 400,000 years.
- But the last 10,000 years, however, have demonstrated remarkable stability, Marcott et al. “A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years” Science 339, 1198 (2013). Available at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2013/03/07/339.6124.1198.DC1/Marcott.SM.pdf (accessed April 11, 2014).
- The last 200 years have seen a significant move away from the trends. Marcott et al. “A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years” Science 339, 1198 (2013). Available at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2013/03/07/339.6124.1198.DC1/Marcott.SM.pdf (accessed April 11, 2014).
- Increasing carbon dioxide concentration is the forcing mechanism for this round of warming. That CO2 holds the
- So – the air temperature is warming and