The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
The climate could change radically, and fast. That would be the mother
of all national security issues.
By David Stipp
Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face
it, most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al
Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote
climate risk may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In
fact, the prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic
planners are grappling with it.
The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming,
rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing
the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the
ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from
one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe that's
gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how
close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change
may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to
rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the
geopolitical balance of power.
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in
the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of
the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning
farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's
California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters
destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to
see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.
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