Climate Change Puts National Security on Thin Ice

Sarah Palin, Congressional Republicans and other flat earthers may reject the science of climate change and evidence of man-made global warming. U.S. national security agencies, however, take the threat of global warming seriously.

These are not merely pollyannish predictions from lefty academics. This is coming from analysts at the CIA, the Pentagon, Center for Naval Analysis and US Army War College who all consider the risks of global warming real, and a threat multiplier. Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, agrees. His testimony before Congress stated that the Intelligence Community believes "global climate change will have important and extensive implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years."

Doubters routinely dismiss or downplay observable changes like glacial melt, rising temperatures, coastal inundation and extreme weather events. Intelligence analysts, however, link them to specific national security threats like scarcity of cropland and freshwater, population displacements, new disease vectors, resource conflicts and political destabilization. Even the loss of vital US military bases.

Climate changes are not maybe's or aberrations. They are measurable.



Last week, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that the polar ice cap shrunk an average 41,000 square miles per day in July, well above the historical average and equaling the rate of melt seen in 2007 when the North Pole ice hit a record low. Top 3 years of fastest ice melt? 2007, 2006, 2009.

If climate change skeptics won't take facts seriously, at least military planners do. The Pentagon is wargaming scenarious that incorporate climate-induced crises in vulnerable regions (like South Asia and the Middle East).

At least some in the US Senate are taking notice. The Foreign Relations Committee recently held hearings on the issue.

Not only are global warming naysayers staring blindly in the face of the best available science, they are being reckless with our national security.

Captain Cook Meet Global Warming

The great navigators of the Age of Explorers were a bit early in their quest to traverse the famed Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. What a difference 500 years makes. What a difference global warming makes.

For perhaps the first time in recorded human history, arctic ice around the North Pole has melted clearing not only a Northwest Passage but also a Northeast Passage.

The North-West Passage (circled left) and the North-East Passage (top right) are both clear of ice now, as shown in satellite photos.

It is an historic event.

But is the world without a North Pole a good thing? Shipping companies and ExxonMobil may love the idea. Climate change scientists are wary.



Polar bears are less enthusiastic, some now facing a 400-mile swim for survival.


And for the rest of us? Is this really such good news?

Categories: GlobalWarming

An Inconvenient Nobel Prize

Al Gore, modern day prophet, has just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise social and political awareness of the dangers of global warming. Gore shares the Prize the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Propelled by the movie "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore has toured the world delivering his PowerPoint pitch on the risks of man-made climate change. The film won an Academy Award. The man is now a Nobel laureate.

The best thing that ever happened to Al Gore was being defrauded in the 2000 election.

Of course, George Bush, the court-appointed winner of that election, is likely too thick to recognize that this year's Peace Prize is a direct retort to his empty, oil-infused rhetoric on climate change and energy policy. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol early in his presidency and has spent the intervening years doing nothing to break the US's "oil addiction" as he called it. Empty words.

Some may question the connection between global warming and peace. It is a short-sighted protest. It is not hard to imagine how severe climate change--bringing the loss of drinkable fresh water, massive flooding, refugees and ruined agricultural lands--could spark major conflicts as people become more desperate to avoid its impact.

Gore will no doubt reject the temptation to run for President this year, despite the efforts of draftGore.com. And why should he? He's on a roll, and the rest of the world beyond 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue knows it.

Categories: GlobalWarming, AlGore

Next Victim of Global Warming: Japan

What is cold, white, flaky and missing in Japan this winter?



Snow.

According to Japan's Meteorological Agency, for the first time since records began in 1867, downtown Tokyo has had a winter with no snow. In fact, this is Japan's warmest winter ever.

And it is not only Tokyo that is suffering. Winter festivals across Japan have been canceled due to insufficient snow.

And a few time zones to the west, the UK has experienced its warmest year-long period ever, from March 2006 to February 2007. That is since 1659, when temperature records began being officially collected in England.

But I'm sure it has nothing to do with the global warming myth.

Categories: GlobalWarming, Japan, UK

Global Warming's Next Victim: Peru

Global warming sure does produce pretty photos from distant places, pretty photos with ugly implications. The next page in the global warming scrapbook comes from Peru. While India is losing islands and Canada its ice shelfs, Peru is losing its glaciers.

A story from The Times (UK) reports the impending loss (that is, melting) of Quelccaya, the main glacier of the world’s largest tropical icecap, located in South America's Andies mountains. It is melting faster than scientists previously measured. Current prediction: Quelccaya will lose half its current mass by next year and disappear entirely by 2012, only 5 years from now.





Here is how the glacier's retreat has progressed in the past 25 years ...




But why worry about a pile of ice far off in the Andies Mountains?

Peru's glaciers feed the rivers that supply water to rural communities and cities where most of the population lives. Glaciers are vital for water supplies, essential for drinking, electricity and agriculture. No glaciers means less water, and less water means less food and more human hardship. It's a simple equation with devastating consequences.


Categories: GlobalWarming, Peru

Global Warming? How about Global Coloring?

While politicans and scientists dither over the recent report on global warming issued yesterday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there was more colorful climate news from Siberia.

Oily, smelly, orange and yellow snow fell on several villages in western Siberia this week.

While they flew in a team of chemical experts to investigate, Russian officials also pronounced no serious health threats from the malodorous, tinted snow.

Despite their assurances, it might be best for Siberians to heed the famous words of advice given to kids in America ... "Don't eat the yellow snow."

Categories: GlobalWarming, Siberia

Global Warming: Greenland Gains Island, India Loses One

At least in the short run, global warming is creating winners and losers. As average temperatures and sea levels climb, some places go green while others go under (water).

Greenland just got greener, adding an island off its coast that was once buried under glacial ice, now melted.

Neither climate computer models nor Google Earth can keep pace with global warming. In this photo, it still shows the island connected to Greenland's mainland by a glacial bridge. (It's the grey-white ice just above the words at bottom of photo)

Contrast Greenland's gain with India's loss. Just before the New Year, the island of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 souls, was submerged by the sea, as blogged about here. It was the first documented case of inhabited land lost to global warming.

The problem is... Greenland's newest island -- named Uunartoq Qeqertoq ("the warming island") in the Inuit language -- is uninhabited. Lohachara had a population of 10,000, and there is no re-location program available to its former residents.

Greenland's melting ice is the #1 contributor to rising oceans globally. It is losing 80 cubic miles of ice per year. That translates into a lot of water. More than Lohachara could withstand. More than a lot of other places will survive.

So global warming has its first namesake: Uunartoq Qeqertoq.

What will we call the next Lohachara?

Categories: GlobalWarming, Greenland, India

Ayles Ice, Lohachara & Our Bi-Polar Disorder

Although they are thousands of miles apart, the Ayles Ice Shelf and Lohachara Island have a lot in common. They are the newest victims of global warming.


Canada now has a new floating island of ice, shown here breaking off from Ellesmere Island on August 13, 2005 ...


... while in India's Bay of Bengal an island has disappeared under the waves (It's now a smudge just below the island in photo), as blogged here recently.

Scientists reported today that the Ayles Ice Shelf, one of only six major ice shelves left in the Canadian Arctic, collapsed from the coast of Ellesmere Island into the sea. And it wasn't the first.


In 2002, the Arctic's largest ice shelf -- the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf -- broke up.


Is this news? It shouldn't be. In 2002, a paper published by the U.S. Geological Survey concluded by saying:

"The ice shelves [along the north coast of Ellesmere Island] were once much more extensive than they are today ... and it is reasonable to suppose that the disintegration of the Ellesmere Ice Shelf was a response to the pronounced warming during the last century ... It is difficult to ignore the connection between the state of the Ellesmere Island ice shelves, the state of the climate, and changes taking place elsewhere in the Arctic Basin. The ice shelves are bellwethers of climate change."

As a New Years resolution for 2007, we should wish all these ostrich-like politicians and skeptics to pull their heads out from the ice and see the bi-polar changes that global warming has already brought. Not to mention what's coming.

Categories: GlobalWarming, Canada, India

No New Year for Lohachara

While most of us will celebrate the coming New Year with hopes for a joyful 2007, the people who lived on the tiny island of Lohachara in India will not. Their island, located where the great Ganges River meets the Bay of Bengal, is gone. It is the first inhabited island to fall victim to global warming. But surely not the last.

Lohachara had an address: Latitude 21.9 / Longitude 88.1058333.

It had a population: 10,000 inhabitants.

It had neighbors: Suparibhanga Island (uninhabited and also now submerged forever).


And now Lohachara has disappeared, swallowed by a rising sea. (It's the grey smudge just below the island in the center of the photo above).

I want to wish all those skeptical, "do nothing" politicians and "scientists" a special New Years wish ...

I wish for you to move to Lohachara's neighboring Ghoramara Island, or Sagar Island, or the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea, or Vanuatu ... stay awhile ... and then tell the world that global warming is not happening. I suggest, however, you bring some scuba gear and a boat.

Categories: GlobalWarming, India