US Dept Of Defense Review Focuses on Climate Terror

By: Andrew_McKillop

The Quadrennial Defense Review

The latest issue of the QDR is available on Defense.gov web sites, and says clearly on page 8 that climate change and global warming pose “significant challenge” for the United States and the world at large. The report states that as greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels will rise and average global temperatures will also increase – whether they are doing that in the real world, or not. Coupled with unlisted “other dynamics”, the report quickly moves to sketch a crisis scenario of growing and urbanizing more-affluent populations, especially in China, India and Brazil being devastated by global warming. The QDR says global warming will “devastate homes, land, and infrastructure”. In turn, this will “aggravate (the) stressors” of global security, which the QDR lists as poverty, political instability, environmental degradation and social tensions.

These stressors, the QDR says, “can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence”.

In the Executive Summary of the 2014 QDR, page 11, it states that the impacts of climate change “may increase the frequency, scale, and complexity of future missions, including defense support to civil authorities, while at the same time undermining the capacity of our domestic installations to support training”. Several times in the QDR, the argument is made that the US Defense department must strive to increase energy and water security, including investments in energy efficiency, new energy technologies and renewable energy – which will “increase the resiliency of our installations and help mitigate these effects”.

In this year's QDR with a signed Introduction by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, his department stresses that US Armed Forces will employ “creative ways to address the impact of climate change”, which the QDR states will continue to
affect the availability and operational effectiveness, as well as the roles and missions of the US military, both at home and abroad.

The Arctic Strategy and Working Together

The 2014 QDR states that due to the gravity of the global warming and climate change challenge, the Dept of Defense has seized on a number of opportunities “for nations to work together”. These include the Department's Arctic Strategy, which apart from acting to provide “unimpeded access to land, air, and sea training and test space”, will also “help in building humanitarian assistance and disaster response capabilities, both within the Department and with our allies and partners”. The QDR for 2014 carries several images of DoD personnel inspecting solar collector arrays, but moves on to the probable main subject of interest, which are threatened budget cuts for the Pentagon, and the DoD's response to these threats including its proposed Combined Joint Force. This would aim at regrouping and streamlining the US military, cutting projected budget increase demands of the Pentagon, which are a subject of hot debate in Congress.

The 2014 QDR many times indicates the Defense department' sensitivity to its exorbitant oil consumption, which its own figures show are close to 115 barrels a year per active member of the US armed forces which total about 1.43 million, making them the world's most oil-intensive excluding a few small extreme cases – in the Gulf Arab countries. This compares with the US national average, which has declined on a yearly basis since 2007 and is now about 17.5 barrels per capita each year, compared with under 4 barrels per capita for China and a world average of around 4.5 barrels per capita a year. Measures announced by the US Defense department to trim its oil habit include a major program for biofuels production, as well as energy-saving standards for vehicles and equipment.

While the QDR claims, many times that global warming and climate change are the headline “threat multipliers”, the review also repeats the theme of rising competition for oil supplies to the US – despite the growth of its national oil and gas production. The QDR says: "The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world”.

Climate Terror and War

The 2014 QDR on occasions dips into purple prose, describing the rising but in its opinion unrecognized threat of global warming leading to a resource-seeking rampage by the Emerging economies pitting them directly against the US, Europe and Japan whose oil demand, using IEA data for 2013, ran at about 15.3 barrels per capita a year, OECD-average. The QDR however does not explain how global warming can lead to North-South or West-East conflict for “remaining oil resources of the planet”. We are supposed to imagine that global warming can or will increase the energy-intensity, especially the oil-intensity of the world's military forces, resulting in an endgame struggle for oil.

The Review does unequivocally claim that global warming, due to rising CO2 levels from fossil fuel burning will reduce water availability and food production. It ignores the very direct link between CO2 levels in the air, and plant growth – therefore crop yields. As CO2 levels rise, plants thrive unless subjected to water shortage or environmental pollution. As the IPCC has been forced to admit, world cloud cover since at latest the 1980s is on an impressive upward track, notably resulting in a rise of rainfall averages in several “traditionally dry” regions of the world.

Most of all however, people have to believe in Global Warming due to humans emitting CO2.

Although coming out of Russia, and therefore suspect, Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of Space research at St. Petersburg's Astronomical Observatory says that the Mars data, also published by the US NASA showing that the solid CO2 ice caps on Mars are shrinking on a regular basis,  is evidence that global warming on Earth, like Mars, is due to the Sun. The global warming which certainly happened on Earth through about 1980-2000 is claimed by Abdussamatov as caused by an overall increase in solar irradiance or total emissions of energy, including heat, that was most intense in the period of about 1960-1995. He said in interview with National Geographic News, October 28, 2010 that "Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,"  These Russian-source arguments for why Earth's climate has become unstable, and has experienced a short period of warming possibly followed by equal or more intense cooling, were predictably and shrilly rejected by the global warming establishment in the west.

IPCC-friendly climate “experts” dismiss the argument for both Earth and Mars experiencing planet warming due to the Sun's irradiance increasing. They say that the shrinkage of the solid CO2 ice caps on Mars can be explained primarily by small alterations in the planet's orbit and tilt, not by changes in the Sun. What is called the Milankovitch theory of astronomical climate variation, when it concerns Earth – which is totally rejected by the global warming establishment – is held, by them, to be perfectly acceptable for Mars! 

What we can call the Russian theory of climate change, as described by Abdussamatov continues by claiming that the most recent peak in Solar irradiance is already well behind us – in the 1990s – and the declining trend is either likely or certain to intensify for the next 20 – 50 years, resulting in “significant Earth cooling”. This, arguably, if it happens, will have at least as much or a greater impact as a “stressor” (using US DoD parlance) for world economic and geopolitical relations.

We can go further, arguing that Vladimir Putin has been hobbled by Global Cooling alarmists in Russia the same way Barack Obama has been hobbled by Global Warming alarmists in the US. Putin is therefore taking strenuous measures to hold on to Russia's Crimean “warm water window” to the south, due to all other Russian coastlines being threatened by massive ice floes all year round “in a short number of years”. At the same time the US Defense department froths with mock-alarm bordering on hysteria that the world is burning – and needs more US defense spending to anticipate the threat!

By Andrew McKillop

Contact: xtran9@gmail.com

Former chief policy analyst, Division A Policy, DG XVII Energy, European Commission. Andrew McKillop Biographic Highlights

Co-author 'The Doomsday Machine', Palgrave Macmillan USA, 2012

Andrew McKillop has more than 30 years experience in the energy, economic and finance domains. Trained at London UK’s University College, he has had specially long experience of energy policy, project administration and the development and financing of alternate energy. This included his role of in-house Expert on Policy and Programming at the DG XVII-Energy of the European Commission, Director of Information of the OAPEC technology transfer subsidiary, AREC and researcher for UN agencies including the ILO.

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