In 2013, the then-Commander of US Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear identified his biggest worry in the Asia-Pacific region as “climate change” – not the People’s Republic of China or North Korea.
The other day another naval man, the retired four-star Admiral James Stavridis, took the Trump Administration to task for not giving climate change equal billing with those nations in the recently-released National Security Strategy.
Of course the climate is changing. It used to snow a lot in Virginia when I was little, and it doesn’t these days. The causes of climate change need to be studied and reasonable measures taken. Extremists at both ends of the spectrum – those who want dismantle the modern technological state or those would do nothing at all – are worth ignoring, as is usually the case with “the ends of the spectrum.”
Now, the Admirals may or may not be right. But what’s the Pentagon supposed to do? This is not what militaries are for. The First Marine Division might as well sacrifice a goat or toss a virgin into a volcano to appease the weather gods.
Not even the extortionately-priced bio-fuels former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus forced on the US military did much of anything climate-wise. And the money could have been better used keeping American pilots trained and American aircraft airworthy.
One notes that the problems predicted from climate change are in the distant – and sometimes far-distant – future. There are more immediate issues for the Pentagon to tackle – such as a communist China hell-bent on dominating East Asia (and as far beyond that as it can get), or Mr. Kim’s nuclear weapons and missiles. And outside of Asia, the Iranians aren’t building nuclear weapons because it’s hot outside. Putin’s land grabs and troublemaking? Hard to blame that on climate change.
These are all things the US military is equipped for and supposed to deal with – and that it should concentrate on. Where Admiral Locklear and Admiral Stavridis are inside the ballpark – though they may not realize it – is with regard to present-day environmental depredations leading to conflict.
For starters, Admiral Stavridis might better direct his ire at the PRC for ‘weaponizing’ environmental destruction in Asia and beyond. Take Beijing’s island-building in the South China Sea (SCS). It has destroyed fragile reefs and fisheries to build military installations that allow it to dominate (and pollute) strategic waterways. This involves preventing other nations from fishing in the SCS or accessing their own maritime resources. This will undermine US alliances and lead to war faster than a ¼ inch rise in sea levels over a century.
Few people mention this. Greenpeace and the NGOs are silent. And it’s not just the South China Sea.
Chinese dam-building on the Mekong River threatens everybody downstream – and can and will be wielded as a weapon to coerce downstream nations. Chinese dams on the headwaters of the Brahmaputra River are also going to cause countries downstream fits – especially in India – as one suspects China intends. Not to mention that dam-building is not exactly environmentally friendly.
Meanwhile, China’s fishing fleets vacuum the seas worldwide – antagonizing governments, putting local fishermen out of work and reducing food supplies. If the US Navy wants to do something useful, it should conduct patrols against illegal fishing and sink a few fishing boats. These are hurting our friends and flouting international rules – and causing lasting environmental damage. (Ask the Indonesians for advice on disposing of illegal fishing boats.)
Endangered species? Say goodbye to pangolins, rhinos, and other species on land and in the ocean. And nobody really thinks Chinese demand for ivory will stop following the PRC’s recently announced ban. Indonesian and other Southeast Asian forests are being illegally logged to meet Chinese demand – destroying environments, corrupting local societies and giving rise to health problems from the attendant haze.
Given this record, Admiral Stavridis might better go after the PRC than the Trump Administration. Why not? One recalls a Singaporean official’s straight-faced response a few years back when asked why Singapore criticizes the US but not the PRC for the same behavior. “The Chinese won’t listen to us.”
They might not listen, but they’ll hear you. And if you take action, they’ll certainly pay attention – not least since it happens so seldom.
At the end of the day, few people change their minds on climate change. But claiming the US military should be a key player is a stretch. A UCLA PhD scientist aptly commented:
“Climate change is an enemy, but it is not a military enemy. If such, if we defeated climate change we would have no more military worries. That is far from the case. The military should be interested in near-term climate change, since it could have an impact on operations (e.g. weather patterns, water availability, sea level). But climate change issues that lead to military issues will first manifest themselves as political issues. That is the Administration’s concern.”
One wishes the US produced more Admirals and Generals who win wars rather than dabble in climatology.
What nonsense this fellow is taking about, blaming China for everything and anything.
Climate change is as natural and inevitable as the seasons.
Various notions of greenhouse and greenhouse gas, simply don’t stack up, in a world of physics.
Yes yes, politically incorrect, I know, I know, but all the nonsense needs some push back.
We emerged from an Ice Age 10K years ago, and the seas have been steadily rising since then. The glaciers have been inexorably receding and the weather has been warming, along with its long term name ‘climate’.
Despite hysterical outbursts to the contrary, CO2 is a trace gas plant food, upon which virtually all plant life on the planet, depends. We eat plants.
Greenhouses are a very limited system, used for growing out of season plants, safely and warmly, for people to enjoy.
Our atmosphere is a virtually unlimited system, the complexity of such, is beyond, all but the most well educated physicists.
The main driver of our planet’s surface temperatures is a very complex issue.
The driver of Ice Ages is also complex and obscure.
But what is not obscure is that one of the main drivers of plant growth and propagation is CO2, the life gas that plants breathe in as they exhale Oxygen, which, by the way, we need to survive, as we eat the plants.
所以不要担心，享受你的生活，并开心
usa propaganda is getting weird everyday.
Nonsense. It’s the difference between a flesh wound and decapitation. Geopolitical interests come and go. Fruends become foes, foes become friends. Mistakes are eventually fixable. But once climate change comes, it cannot be reversed or easily fixed.
US: 5% of world’s population, 30% of world’s pollution… And this is not including Pentagon’s pollution, which is "exported" and generated all over the world ( Is pollution the second main US export after wars ? )
When the US starts WWIII, it will probably destroy most of the US Europe and China.
That will stop climate change.
"The driver of Ice Ages is also complex and obscure."
Sorry to disagree, yes the drivers of natural climate change are complex, but not obscure. Try searching for Milankovitch cycles, they even explain why the southern hemisphere has a bigger summer/winter difference than the north.
As for CO2, yes plants consume it, if not for plants consuming CO2, terrestial animal life would never have evolved in the toxic atmosphere.
As for our atmosphere being unlimited, mm, well there is lots of nitrogen, but the creation of CO2, obviously means there is less oxygen.
It took plants hundreds of millions of years to convert CO2 into oxygen, how long will it take man to turn the oxygen back into CO2?
1．Suspicions galore. Facts few. "…as one suspects China intends" seems to be the key to this piece, as it is to all Mr. Newsham’s other pieces. Regurgitation of what appears in Japanese media. Good to see this propaganda. Better to question it.
2. I wish people would understand that freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is more important to China than to anyone else. I also wish US policy-makers would understand that threatening to attack people is not the way to get them to reduce military preparedness. The US has lots of submarines in the SCS, I understand….
3. Russia is not making trouble as much as the US is. The US was proud to have spent $5 billion in Ukraine before the coup, for which they used Ukrainian fascist groups, as well as "useful idiot" Ukrainian idealists. They deposed an elected president and then said Russia was the bad guy. Nice work if you can get it. And Russia could not be expected to meekly give up its main warm-water naval base in Crimea, which it has held for two centuries.
4. All that having been said, I do not expect a Chinese empire to be any more considerate of other countries than the US empire has been, no matter what they think they are doing. Americans think the US is purely a force for good, too.
Allan Jeffreys An accurate reading would yield that my text said ‘ a virtually unlimited system’. That does not mean unlimited in volume etc. What that means is that, unlike a very closed system of a garden greenhouse, our atmosphere is has so many feedback systems and inputs, along with exits, to the system, that it is virtually unlimited.
However Allan, to come across these data, one needs to first doubt the pervasive authority on the subject, the mass media and UN organs such as the IPCC. In fact there is more than significant scientific illiteracy and a lot of funding and careers to be gained, from belief in the AGW message.
The hallmark of science though, is skepticism. When that is gone, and phrases such as ‘the science is settled’, are used, we have left science behind and ventured into politics.
Mind you, I am merely stating my well considered and researched, scientific opinion. I am not trying to influence others, except maybe, that not believing mass movements and doing your own specialised research, is a rewarding activity, and yields truth.
Truth is rare.
These pages attest to that. 😀
Allan, climate change is a long term cycling of the planet’s atmosphere, we have had many many Ice Ages, and Warming Periods.
They are on record for the curious.
I urge you to be curious.
Go in peace my friend.
头脑不是要被装满的器皿，而是要点燃的火焰。
Merlin Geikie Actually I spent 2 years of my life researching climate change. I couldn’t say positively that climate change is man made, although there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to human intervention.
It doesn’t really matter if it’s manmade or natural, because man will not change his ways, and even if all the man made sources of CO2 were shut down today, levels would continue to rise for at least another thousand years.
The he writes as in all his previous articles, is as if his wife or mother has been seduced by a Chinese or he himself has been buggered by one. Rest my case.
Wish the world of academia produced more genuine academics rather than one who dabbles in prejudiced half truths and trash. Looking at his image, come to think of it, he looks a bit mongoloid.
Angloloid…
What a wierd article. It’s a bit like listenng to a drunk marine, not quite what one would expect from a senior research fellow.
Another mediocre journalist writing drivel about a subject he obviously knows little about. God forbid his comfortable view of the world be threatened by actually opening his mind and confronting the reality before his eyes. This attitude reminds of the appeasers in Britain just prior to WWll. No matter how hard Churchill tried, he just couldn’t get them to acknowledge the ‘gathering storm’ across the channel. Our own storms have gathered, it would seem.
Yes, Gallipoli repeating
Luca Taramelli what percent of the world’s goods does the US produce? What does your country produce and how much pollution?
Allan Jeffreys
Allan that is true on the thousand years scenario.
However, if you are a physicist, you know that the CO2 argument also cannot account for climate change, neither can the ‘hidden heat’ explanation, of why the ‘pause’.
On the surface, and with confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance, it is very difficult, to even hold notions, that AGW may not be, or that CO2 is not a toxic gas but a totally essential gas, for all life on the planetary surface.
Global Warming is a phenomenon which we do not understand, just as the Global Cooling, which produced the big Ice Ages, and the ‘little Ice Age’, also call the Maunder Minimum, that persisted worldwide between, 1350 and 1850.
We are still recovering from the effects of the mini ice age, which hit Europe very hard indeed. During the 1800s one in every two children born in Germany died, and in Sweden it was one in three.
There is a lot we don’t know.