Military considers global warming threat

By Ty Tagami

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The hand-wringing over global warming is often done by scientists and preservationists, but on Tuesday several high-ranking current and former military men visited Atlanta and talked about the possible consequences for U.S. security.

They imagine disruptions in the supply of food and water that lead to unrest and to conflict around the globe. They see poverty-stricken countries becoming increasingly unstable. And they worry about whole populations on the move, as the seas rise and rivers change their courses.

Rear Admiral David Titley said there is strong evidence that old arctic ice has melted much faster than new ice can replace it. It's a trend that scientists predict could someday yield a rise in sea level by a meter or two, he said.

"I've had people ask me: ‘Why should the Navy care?'" he said. He has a dry response loaded with sarcasm: "Well, we tend to build our bases at sea level."

The admiral was in town for a convention of weather watchers: the 90th American Meteorological Society annual meeting at the Georgia World Congress Center.

Many panels had innocuous-sounding names like "policy statement on the bachelor of science degree in atmospheric sciences" or "gravitational settling, deposition and resuspension." But Titley and other panelists with military ties were tucked into an afternoon program entitled "environmental security and climate change."

Richard Engel, a retired major general who runs a climate change analysis program for the National Intelligence Council, said he couldn't have imagined speaking about global warming a dozen years ago. But a 2008 law requires the military to assess the consequences for national security should the dire scientific predictions pan out.

Drastic changes in the weather would become a security issue if they resulted in economic, political and social disruptions, Engel said. And not just in other countries: Hurricane "Katrina almost began to rip at the fabric of U.S. society," he said.

He said concerns range from instability due to lack of water and damage to infrastructure to new patterns in diseases that infect people, animals and crops.

Political pressure to aid impoverished countries abroad could become "unbearable," resulting in more military involvement, said Ronald Filadelfo, a research director at the Center for Naval Analyses, a non-profit that does research for the military. "There's a risk that all these bird-brained scientists could be right," he joked, "so we as a nation should be ready."

Everyone does not agree that climate change is a bad thing, said Steven Goodwin, a director at the National Defense University. For instance, he said, Russia could profit if Siberia thaws and becomes an agricultural center.

But Rear Admiral Titley said he loses sleep over a reported byproduct of global warming: rising acid levels in the ocean that might affect a food chain that feeds about a sixth of the world's population.

"Can the ecosystem adapt as fast as we're changing the ocean?" he said. "If it can't, you have to ask yourself: where will the one billion people who get their protein from the ocean ... get it?"