Among its top search results today for “climate change,” Google News is highlighting an article from Defense News titled, “Battling climate change starts with military action.”
The article falsely claims climate change is threatening U.S. military operations and preparedness by enhancing sea-level rise and extreme weather events.
Both claims are untrue. Data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) consistently show the number and intensity of extreme weather events, from hurricanes to wildfires are about the same, or even slightly less frequent and severe than they have been historically.
Cmdr. Benjamin Simon writes:
“The effects of climate change are all around. They can be seen by the Gulf Coast bracing for seven named storms in 2020; wildfires in California interrupting electricity for hundreds of thousands ….
As a 16-year naval aviator, I have seen how serious climate instability is: From the flooding of our naval bases, due to the rising sea level, to increased storms at a higher intensity, the climate emergency is affecting our military’s capability to operate. During my service, I had to cancel missions due to hurricanes, typhoons, and other severe weather.”
It is almost certainly true that during his career as a naval aviator Simon has had to cancel missions due to extreme weather. He has also likely seen military bases flood on occasion.
However, hurricanes and flooding are historically common natural occurrences, long pre-dating the current obsession with climate change.
Also, the best available evidence indicates such extremes are not becoming more common, nor is the current rate of sea-level rise exceeding historic rates.
As discussed in Climate Realism here, here, and here, for example, 2020 did not set a record for hurricanes in the United States, and hurricane numbers and intensity have been in a long-term decline (See the figure below).
Simon presents no evidence California’s 2020 wildfire season disrupted any military operations. However, even if it did, as discussed here and here, for example, there is copious evidence wildfires across the Western United States have been in a long-term decline.
Also historically, California has experienced wildfire seasons as bad as, or worse than, the 2020s on a nearly annual basis.
Sea levels are rising. However, as detailed in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise: Data shows global sea level has been rising at a relatively steady pace of approximately one foot per century since at least the mid-1800s, which was long before coal power plants and SUVs.
Moreover, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms there has been no significant recent acceleration.
Global sea level has risen approximately 400 feet since the beginning of the end of the most recent ice age—approximately 20,000 years ago.
The rate of sea-level rise has risen and fallen at various times since then, slowing and increasing on the order of tens, hundreds, and thousands of years over the past 20,000 years.
None of this variance had anything to do with human activities. Indeed, as NASA reports, sea level always rises between ice ages as ice sheets retreat. During the last interglacial period between ice ages, seas were four to six meters higher than we are experiencing today.
As shown in Climate Realism, recent claims made by climate alarmists that sea-level rise has been accelerating is due to scientists combining the two dissimilar datasets from different sets of satellites, neither of which shows accelerated sea-level rise.
They then plotted a new trend showing acceleration. As meteorologist Anthony Watts writes concerning this manipulation of the data, “This is either incompetent or dishonest and certainly not up to even the simplest of basic science principles.”
Recent flooding at naval stations, as is true for many cities around the world, is due more to land subsidence—the gradual sinking of land either under its own weight, under the weight of man-made structures, due to water withdrawals from aquifers, and from the conversion and replacement of wetlands with infrastructure—rather than from sea levels rising at an increasing rate.
As noted in a report by the National Center for Public Policy Research:
In a 2010 report submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science found that 50 percent of the relative sea-level rise at the Chesapeake Bay water-level stations between 1976 and 2007 was due to subsidence.
At Norfolk and other bases subject to subsidence, it’s not just the seas that are rising, but the land that’s sinking.
In order for climate change to be hampering U.S. military operations and preparedness, it must first be causing more frequent or severe weather events or making the seas rise faster. Data demonstrates it is not, and Google News and Defense News should know this.
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
Read more at Climate Realism
If facts don’t help your budget, go with the flow. The military straddles the fence, the Democrat/Republican ying/yang.
D
Surely, the Google news article is more deserving of an ‘F’.
The Democrats put National Security Last when compared to getting Votes from Future Democrat Voters better known as Illegal Aliens
Are rising sea levels threatening the US navy now?
I guess the Cmdr. never received the ribbon for brightness.
7 storms in the Gulf in one year ? Not unusual !
Fires in Calif. burning houses ? Don’t build in forests without thinking !
Navy bases flooding ? I just can’t figure where you should build them.
Storms delaying flights,etc ? Ask any airline is they ever delayed or cancelled !
Bumper Sticker last week. It’s not Climate, stupid! It’s weather!
As the article pointed out very well, the military is not being threatened by climate change, however, the climate change movement presents a real threat that it will have to deal with. One is power outages as they become more common and eventually will be a normal part of life. There is the budge impact of increasing fuel costs caused by the climate change movement. The same issue may cause civil unrest as has happened in France with the Yellow Vest Movement. Steal production requires burning coal. The defense department will have to rely on foreign steal for new ships and the structure of new buildings. Fossil fuels are heavily used in food production. As these fuels get more expensive the cost of food bought by the military will go up, and there could be civil unrest. If we get close to net zero, the nation will be in a famine, and there will be no fuel for ships and aircraft.
We are in the best fed, longest-living, most prosperous, and GREENEST time the environment has seen since CO2 was this high naturally twelve million years ago. CO2, through photosynthesis, is the basic ingredient of life on earth. It is literally the “green” in the environment through its green pigmented enzyme chlorophyll. And CO2 has been naturally declining from life luxuriant levels ten to twenty times those of today for the entire existence of multicellular life. Declining to today’s starvation level lows. Bjorn Lomborg, author of several books on climate including “Cool-it” and “False Alarm”, has calculated the number of weather-related deaths worldwide per year. One hundred years ago, 500,000 died per year. Today climate deaths are down to 56,000 per year. Compare that to twelve MILLION per year from a LACK OF ENERGY. Dr. John Christy has a very good knowledge on the last hundred years of climate related disasters. Almost without exception, the climate’s effect on humanity has been improving. And there’s been a string of world record crop yields. More CO2 has indisputably improved the environment. That is two hundred year old biology. Yet the media and grade school teachers are still indoctrinating their children and spreading the climate lie. The communist Chinese must be rubbing their hands in glee. More CO2 has been the best gift to the environment in twelve million years, the last time that CO2 was naturally this high. It’s made the environment greener, helped cause a string of world record crop yields, and literally been shrinking deserts through more drought tolerance across all plant species. There is no climate problem. Let alone a crisis. It is a lie and a fraud and has been right from the beginning. Spread by people that simply are not capable of fact-checking themselves. And it’s done incredible damage, particularly to the poorest fifth of society. And to schoolchildren, who are being indoctrinated to believe that they will die young because of climate. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maurice Strong is already dead, after spreading the cult of the environment. David Suzuki, started out wanting to spread knowledge of science to the public. And yet like everything else he touches, all he’s done is spread fear and ignorance. Suzuki and his ilk should be ashamed of themselves. As should the politicians and pseudo journalists that can’t be bothered to learn a little basic biology. For some reason, they’d rather ambulance chase forest fires and hurricanes rather than researching what is a very good story about how fossil fuels recycle the life essential trace gas CO2 back to the atmosphere where it making the environment greener and agriculture much more productive. Shame on them. Barry Bateman, B.Sc.(biology)