Does Climate Change Threaten International Peace and Security?

Here is an editorial expressing concern about future climate change being a threat to national security. It is mentioned that a group of retired U.S. Generals and Admirals studied the subject and reached the same conlusion. I have a few problems with this rationale. I know it is difficult to argue with a General or United Nations "experts", but here goes anyway.

First, I question their primary assumption. That is they accept the idea that there is going to be catastrophic, disaterous climate change in the near future, more severe than is "normal", whatever normal is. Remember, the climate is alwasy changing.

Second, they apparently accept the simple hypothesis that carbon dioxide emissions are creating global warming and climate change. They blindly accept this premise even though many, many independent scientists disagree.

Third, they seem to think mankind can do something about global warming and climate change. Finally they seem to imply that the U.S. can somehow intervene in Africa, Latin America, Asia, or wherever, and alleviate the problems caused by drastic climate change. There are a lot of "ifs", and haven't we learned that "intervening" is not always a smart thing to do?

Does anyone beside me think that just perhaps these experts and Generals and Admirals are using these dire predictions to try to make sure they continue getting massive government spending on the military? Scare tactics have worked before, and now with the Cold War over they must come up with another scary "bogey-man". It seems everyone can use global warming to further their own agenda.
Peter

This editorial is from here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/opinion/24homer-dixon.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin


By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON
Published: April 24, 2007
Toronto
DOES climate change threaten international peace and security? The British government thinks it does. As this month’s head of the United Nations Security Council, Britain convened a debate on the matter last Tuesday. One in four United Nations member countries joined the discussion — a record for this kind of thematic debate.

Countries rich and poor, large and small, and from all continents — Bangladesh, Ghana, Japan, Mexico, much of Europe and, most poignantly, a large number of small island states endangered by rising seas — recognized the security implications of climate change. Some other developing countries — Brazil, Cuba and India and most of the biggest producers of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide, including China, Qatar and Russia — either questioned the very idea of such a link or argued that the Security Council is not the right place to talk about it.

But these skeptics are wrong. Evidence is fast accumulating that, within our children’s lifetimes, severe droughts, storms and heat waves caused by climate change could rip apart societies from one side of the planet to the other. Climate stress may well represent a challenge to international security just as dangerous — and more intractable — than the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war or the proliferation of nuclear weapons among rogue states today.

Congress and senior military leaders are taking heed: Legislation under consideration in both the Senate and the House calls for the director of national intelligence to report on the geopolitical implications of climate change. And last week a panel of 11 retired generals and admirals warned that climate change is already a “threat multiplier” in the world’s fragile regions, “exacerbating conditions that lead to failed states — the breeding grounds for extremism and terrorism.”

Addressing the question of scientific uncertainty about climate change, Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, a former Army chief of staff who is now retired, said: “Speaking as a soldier, we never have 100 percent certainty. If you wait until you have 100 percent certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield.”

In the future, that battlefield is likely to be complex and hazardous. Climate change will help produce the kind of military challenges that are difficult for today’s conventional forces to handle: insurgencies, genocide, guerrilla attacks, gang warfare and global terrorism.

In the 1990s, a research team I led at the University of Toronto examined links between various forms of environmental stress in poor countries — cropland degradation, deforestation and scarcity of fresh water, for example — and violent conflict. In places as diverse as Haiti, Pakistan, the Philippines and South Africa, we found that severe environmental stress multiplied the pain caused by such problems as ethnic strife and poverty.

Rural residents who depend on local natural resources for their livelihood become poorer, while powerful elites take control of — and extract exorbitant profits from — increasingly valuable land, forests and water. As these resources in the countryside dwindle, people sometimes join local rebellions against landowners and government officials. In mountainous areas of the Philippines, for instance, deforestation, soil erosion and depletion of soil nutrients have increased poverty and helped drive peasants into the arms of the Communist New People’s Army insurgency.

Other times, people migrate in large numbers to regions where resources seem more plentiful, only to fight with the people already there. Or they migrate to urban slums, where unemployed young men can be primed to join criminal gangs or radical political groups.

Climate change will have similar effects, if nations fail to aggressively limit carbon dioxide emissions and develop technologies and institutions that allow people to cope with a warmer planet.

The recent report of Working Group II of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies several ways warming will hurt poor people in the third world and hinder economic development there more generally. Large swaths of land in subtropical latitudes — zones inhabited by billions of people — will experience more drought, more damage from storms, higher mortality from heat waves, worse outbreaks of agricultural pests and an increased burden of infectious disease.

The potential impact on food output is a particular concern: in semiarid regions where water is already scarce and cropland overused, climate change could devastate agriculture. (There is evidence that warming’s effect on crops and pastureland is a cause of the Darfur crisis.) Many cereal crops in tropical zones are already near their limits of heat tolerance, and temperatures even a couple of degrees higher could lead to much lower yields.

By weakening rural economies, increasing unemployment and disrupting livelihoods, global warming will increase the frustrations and anger of hundreds of millions of people in vulnerable countries. Especially in Africa, but also in some parts of Asia and Latin America, climate change will undermine already frail governments — and make challenges from violent groups more likely — by reducing revenues, overwhelming bureaucracies and revealing how incapable these governments are of helping their citizens.

We’ve learned in recent years that such failure can have consequences around the world and that great powers can’t always isolate themselves from these consequences. It’s time to put climate change on the world’s security agenda.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, director of the Trudeau Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto, is the author of “The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization.”

Global Cooling? It has happened before

The Earth has obviously gone through countless, remarkable periods of both warming and cooling. What should give us pause for thought is these occurred long before man began burning lots of fossil fuels and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We're not even really sure warming is even occuring and there are obviously factors at work other than man and our pathetically minor input of carbon dioxide.

From a friend, here is a summary from a presentation on the television History Channel about the affects of what is now known as "The Little Ice Age".

A gem off the History Channel this morning.

Consequences of the
Little Ice Age.
It began in the 1300s, wiped out the Vikings in Greenland,
defeated the Spanish Armada, keeping England English, spread potatoes across
Europe, won our Independence, defeated Napoleon, started our westward migration, and created Frankenstein.
It was believed triggered by an increased incidence of Krakatoa-scale volcanic eruptions: 5 per century as compared to the usual 1 per century. And on top of
this: 5.April 1815 came the explosion of Mt Tambora
on Sumbawa, Indonesia. 36 cubic miles of debris were sent up to 15 miles
into the stratosphere. This is 100x the ash of St Helens.
A dusty fog hung all summer over N. Europe. It snowed. In Hungary the snow was brown. Agricultural resources already devastated by Napolean's march into Russia were ruined by the cold. People starved.
As the "year without summer" began in 1816, Percy Shelley, his 19yr old wife Mary, and their friend Lord Byron, went on vacation to Lake Geneva. But it was too cold and grim to go outside. So the three decided to amuse themselves indoors w/ a
contest to see who could write the scariest story.
Mary won.

The potato was brought to Europe from the new world by early Spanish
explorers. But it was culturally out of whack with traditional staples and
was quickly opposed by the clergy who called potatoes the "devil's crop". People starved when crops failed but potatoes were still avoided.
Then came the 30 Years War. A traditional strategy of warfare in
those days was the burning of crops. This destroyed surface crops like the
grains. But potatoes live underground out of touch of burning, and
freezing. Hence, thanks to the 30 Years War, potatoes
finally became accepted as a staple in Europe.

One consequence of global warming is global cooling, considered the bigger threat to survival since it wipes out food supply. The warming causes the cooling owing to glacial snow melt changing ocean salinity which interrupts temperature conveyor currents that currently keep the northern latitudes warm.
Pentagon commissioned a study of the coming ice age scenario. This is raising concern about threats to world order. It is based upon an actual catastrophic temperature change of 802 yrs ago that created anarchy worldwide and changed history. Temp dropped 9 degrees in one year. Rivers froze, crops failed, people starved, nations were drained of resources. Breakdown of societies resulted.
Skirmishes, civil wars, and invasions broke out over resources and water.
This time around it will be worse.
Pentagon is interested to determine how the destabilization will play out and what role the U.S. will have in maintaining world order during the chaos. Likely the U.S. will be soley responsible and plans need be on the shelf.
China a volatile flashpoint. By the scenario, civil war erupts. Chinese Army threatens to invade Russia for it's gas. There will be virtual full scale civil invasion of the U.S. from Latin America. U.S. Navy heads for Gulf to protect Saudi oil resources.

It is not yet clear whether we are going into hyperwarming or hyper cooling. Arguments still out. Behooves to be more cautious w/ possible human influences on global environment