February 19, 2013 -- What if the effects of
global warming resulted in the unthinkable happening? What if massive climate
change caused by global warming resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions
of people due to mega-droughts, global famine, water and energy shortages, and
nations used nuclear weapons to protect their dwindling resources?
It is a scenario that is more
plausible than not. It is so plausible
that the Office of Net Assessment – the Pentagon’s highly respected internal
think-tank – commissioned a report to explore the national security impacts of
rapid climate change and how the United States should prepare militarily
for this scenario. In addition to the
military option, the report’s authors call for ways to offset abrupt cooling.
The report – An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security –
was completed in October 2003 but was not publicly acknowledged by
Pentagon officials until its key findings were leaked and published in
some European
newspapers in February 2004. One of the
key conclusions of the report was that within as
little as five years, the world-wide security threat from climate change would be greater than that of
terrorism. Therefore, the United States needs to plan for a time when a fortress mentality
will be the only answer to protecting its territory and its resources..
* A Blueprint for the Department of Defense’s Strategic Assessment of Climate Change
An early climatic outcome would be massive and violent ocean storms ravaging sea coasts around the world, and making many
coastal cities uninhabitable. A
projected 4°C
drop in world-wide average annual temperatures would result in Siberia-like
winters in Europe
and North America,
along with droughts and severely shortened
growing seasons in the world’s food growing regions. In the “have not” regions of the world tens
of millions would die due to wars and famine in nations where resources
are already scarce. And as millions of
migrants from Africa,
Asia and South
America try to find refuge in Europe,
Japan,
Australia
and North America
(regions better able to cope with these calamities) these regions would become
virtual fortresses to keep them out.
These weather changes would also lead to nuclear proliferation as have
not countries with the technical capability develop nuclear weapons to protect
themselves from their neighbours, and to blackmail the “have” countries for
assistance.
So how can we as individuals and nations plan for this global chaos? To start with we need to increase pressure on our governments to implement the Kyoto Accords as a first step. The next step is to work with the international community to convince the United States government (the world’s biggest consumer of energy) that it is in their political, economic and military interests to take the scientific evidence seriously, and also implement policies to mitigate climate change.
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The predictions contained in the report were
based on research examining pre-historic weather patterns and studies of the
ocean’s thermohaline conveyor which is responsible for controlling the world’s
weather patterns. Furthermore, this
system of oceanic currents keeps the world’s warm and cold currents circulating
and regulates the ocean’s salinity.
According to this research the rapid melting
of the polar regions
due to global warming would release massive amounts of fresh water into the
oceans thus affecting ocean currents, ocean salinity, and raising sea
levels. This would cause the thermohaline
conveyor to slow down thereby changing weather patterns world-wide.
So how can we as individuals and nations plan for this global chaos? To start with we need to increase pressure on our governments to implement the Kyoto Accords as a first step. The next step is to work with the international community to convince the United States government (the world’s biggest consumer of energy) that it is in their political, economic and military interests to take the scientific evidence seriously, and also implement policies to mitigate climate change.
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