The Pentagon's
Weather Nightmare
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The climate could
change radically, and fast. That would be the mother of all national
security issues.
Global warming may be bad news for future generations,
but let's face it, most of us spend as little time
worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the
terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner
and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real
that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.
The threat that has riveted their attention is this:
Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may
be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the
ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can lurch from
one state to another in less than a decade--like a canoe that's gradually
tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't know how close the
system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur
in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may
overwhelm many societies--thereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of
power.
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably
cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher
winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it
would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to
ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as
a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers
such as Pakistan or Russia--it's easy
to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.
Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned
about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in
ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic
shifts in average temperature took place in the past with shocking
speed--in some cases, just a few years.
The case for angst was buttressed by a theory regarded
as the most likely explanation for the abrupt changes. The eastern U.S. and northern
Europe, it seems,
are warmed by a huge Atlantic Ocean current that
flows north from the tropics--that's why Britain, at Labrador's latitude,
is relatively temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air, this "great
conveyor" current gets cooler and denser as it moves north. That
causes the current to sink in the North
Atlantic, where it heads south again in the ocean depths. The
sinking process draws more water from the south, keeping the roughly
circular current on the go.
But when the climate warms, according to the theory,
fresh water from melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North
Atlantic, lowering the current's salinity--and its density and
tendency to sink. A warmer climate also increases rainfall and runoff into
the current, further lowering its saltiness. As a result, the conveyor
loses its main motive force and can rapidly collapse, turning off the huge
heat pump and altering the climate over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Scientists aren't sure what caused the warming that
triggered such collapses in the remote past. (Clearly it wasn't humans and
their factories.) But the data from Arctic ice and other sources suggest
the atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses were dismayingly
similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age began drawing to a close
about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in Greenland rose to
levels near those of recent decades. Then they abruptly plunged as the
conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in the "Younger Dryas" period, a
1,300-year reversion to ice-age conditions. (A dryas
is an Arctic flower that flourished in Europe at the
time.)
Though Mother Nature caused past abrupt climate
changes, the one that may be shaping up today probably has more to do with
us. In 2001 an international panel of climate experts concluded that there
is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global warming observed
over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities--mainly the
burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which release heat-trapping
carbon dioxide. Indicators of the warming include
shrinking Arctic ice, melting alpine glaciers, and markedly earlier springs
at northerly latitudes. A few years ago such changes seemed signs of
possible trouble for our kids or grandkids. Today they seem portents of a
cataclysm that may not conveniently wait until we're history.
Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is
shifting from gradual to rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of
Sciences issued a report concluding that human activities could trigger
abrupt change. Last year the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a
session at which Robert Gagosian, director of the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, urged
policymakers to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change
within two decades.
Such jeremiads are beginning to reverberate more
widely. Billionaire Gary Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted abrupt
climate change as a philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also
discovered the issue--next summer 20th Century Fox is expected to release
The Day After Tomorrow, a big-budget disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to save the world from an
ice age precipitated by global warming.
Fox's flick will doubtless be apocalyptically edifying.
But what would abrupt climate change really be like?
Scientists generally refuse to say much about that,
citing a data deficit. But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner
Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the
question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is
known as the Defense Department's "Yoda"--a balding, bespectacled
sage whose pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized
influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think
tank whose role is to envision future threats to national security. The
Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense is known as his
brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
picked him to lead a sweeping review on military
"transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart
weapons.
When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped
onto his radar screen, Marshall tapped
another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write a report on the
national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz formerly headed
planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted with
organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorks--he helped create
futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz
and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network,
a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate
experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away
from--at least in public.
The result is an unclassified report, completed late
last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share
with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a
dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping
strategies. Here is an abridged version:
A TOTAL SHUTDOWN of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like
the Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far
south as the coast of Portugal. Or the
conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially causing an era like
the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent storms, and
droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes caused horrific
famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas.
For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a
midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather
across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits
the bill--its severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas
and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a
conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's
global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of
the things that might happen by 2020:
At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal
weather variation--allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip"
of little importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with
uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is
happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees
Fahrenheit in some regions of North
America and Asia and up to
six degrees in parts of Europe. (By
comparison, the average temperature over the North
Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower
than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions.
The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and its
climate has become more like Siberia's.
Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor
becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes
the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands, making
coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable.
In California the delta
island levees in the Sacramento River area are
breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to
south.
Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially
in the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average
than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better
positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse
growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a
downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters
bellicose finger-pointing at America.
Turning inward, the U.S. effectively
seeks to build a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened
to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South
America, and the Caribbean
islands--waves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension
between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the
U.S. reneges on a
1944 treaty that guarantees water flow from the Colorado
River into Mexico. America is forced to
meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both
economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle
Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses.
Europe, hardest hit
by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with immigrants from Scandinavia seeking
warmer climes to the south. Southern
Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and
elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth
helps buffer it from catastrophe.
Australia's size and
resources help it cope, as does its location--the conveyor shutdown mainly
affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer
resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to cope--its government
is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources.
China's huge
population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It is hit by
increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating floods in
drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are
similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes
nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates
inland water supplies. Countries whose diversity already produces conflict,
such as India and Indonesia, are
hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding
changes.
As the decade progresses, pressures to act become
irresistible --history shows that whenever humans have faced a choice
between starving or raiding, they raid. Imagine
Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations, invading Russia--which is
weakened by a population that is already in decline--for access to its
minerals and energy supplies. Or picture Japan eyeing
nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power desalination plants and
energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing
at their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land.
Or Spain and Portugal fighting
over fishing rights--fisheries are disrupted around the world as water
temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats.
Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins
fortress America in a North
American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to
keep its abundant hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the
energy-hungry U.S.) North and South Korea align to
create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed entity. Europe forms a
truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems and protect against
aggressors. Russia, threatened
by impoverished neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc.
Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies
are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek
to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear
proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop
nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are
poised to use the bomb.
The changes relentlessly hammer the world's
"carrying capacity"--the natural resources, social organizations,
and economic networks that support the population. Technological progress
and market forces, which have long helped boost Earth's carrying capacity,
can do little to offset the crisis--it is too widespread and unfolds too
fast.
As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient
pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food,
water, and energy supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has
noted, wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries ago.
When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually
died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define
human life.
Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting
that the plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the
scientific community, and perhaps all of the political community, are
prepared to accept. In light of such findings, we should be asking when
abrupt change will happen, what the impacts will be, and how we can
prepare--not whether it will really happen. In fact, the climate record
suggests that abrupt change is inevitable at some point, regardless of
human activity. Among other things, we should:
- Speed research on the forces that can trigger
abrupt climate change, how it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.
- Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play
out, including ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on
key food-producing regions.
- Identify "no regrets" strategies to
ensure reliable access to food and water and to ensure our national
security.
- Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive
migration, and food and water shortages.
- Explore ways to offset abrupt cooling--today it
appears easier to warm than to cool the climate via human activities,
so there may be "geo-engineering" options available to
prevent a catastrophic temperature drop.
In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change remains
uncertain, and it is quite possibly small. But given its dire consequences,
it should be elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now matters,
because we may be able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and we can
certainly be better prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it as a
national security concern.
The Pentagon's reaction to this sobering report isn't
known--in keeping with his reputation for reticence, Andy Marshall declined
to be interviewed. But the fact that he's concerned may signal a sea change
in the debate about global warming. At least some federal thought leaders
may be starting to perceive climate change less as a political annoyance
and more as an issue demanding action.
If so, the case for acting now to address climate
change, long a hard sell in Washington, may be gaining influential support,
if only behind the scenes. Policymakers may even be emboldened to take
steps such as tightening fuel-economy standards for new passenger vehicles,
a measure that would simultaneously lower emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce
America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its trade deficit, and put
money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yes--and give the Pentagon's fretful Yoda
a little less to worry about.
FEEDBACK dstipp@fortunemail.com
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF WAR
Abrupt climate shifts in prehistoric times appear to have caused freezes,
fires, and dust-bowl conditions on a scale that today would bring scary
geopolitical fallout.
PHOTO (COLOR): INCREASINGLY VIOLENT STORMS AND FLOODS
could accompany a shutdown of the vast ocean current that warms Europe and the
northeastern United
States.
PHOTO (COLOR)
PHOTO (COLOR)
~~~~~~~~
By David Stipp
If abrupt climate change is on the way, the driving force will
probably be a great ocean current that one scientist calls the
"Achilles' heel of our climate system." The current, known as the
great conveyor, sweeps north through the Atlantic, carrying warmth from the tropics to the
eastern U.S. and northern Europe before looping south. If the current shuts
down--which apparently can occur rapidly during times of global
warming--the huge heat pump goes off, potentially causing drastic weather
changes in just a few years.
MAP
DIAGRAM: WARM SURFACE CURRENTS: COLD DEEP CURRENTS
PHOTO (COLOR): FREEZING Deprived of the flow of warmth from the tropics, northern Europe could become more like Labrador--or Siberia.
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): DUST BOWL Meanwhile, in North America, drought coupled with higher winds could
ravage the Midwest's farmlands.
PHOTO (COLOR): WILDFIRES Past conveyor shutdowns are linked to
massive fires in North America, which left telltale ash in ancient Arctic
ice.
Scientists used to think that major climate changes, like the onset
of an ice age, took thousands of years to unfold. Now they know such
dramatic transitions can occur in less than a decade. The probable trigger
of abrupt climate changes, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, is the
shutdown of a huge ocean current in the Atlantic Ocean. The current is driven by dense, salty
water that flows north from the tropics and sinks in the North Atlantic. If fresh water is pumped into the
northerly part of the current--which can occur as global warming melts Arctic
ice--its salinity drops, making it less dense. This diminishing density can
prevent the water from sinking in the North Atlantic, stopping the current's flow. Much of Europe and the U.S. could become colder and drier if that
happened.
Many details of this big picture remain hazy, including whether
recent global warming threatens to shut down the Atlantic current. But over
the past few years, scientists have detected disquieting trends:
·
In
tandem with rising average temperatures across the globe, 3% to 4% of the
Arctic ice cap has melted per decade since about 1970.
·
Recently
the Arctic's largest ice shelf broke up near Canada's Ellesmere
Island, releasing an ice-dammed freshwater lake
into the ocean. (Scientists believe that the similar melting of an Arctic
ice dam 8,200 years ago triggered an episode of abrupt climate change.)
·
The
North Atlantic's salinity has declined continuously for the past 40
years--the most dramatic oceanic change ever measured.
·
The
flow of cold, dense water through a North Atlantic channel near Norway--part of the great ocean current that warms northern Europe--has dropped by
at least 20% since 1950, suggesting that the current is weakening.
Scientists still don't know whether a climate disaster is on the
way. But taken together, these changes appear strikingly similar to ones
that preceded abrupt climate shifts in the past. Many researchers now
believe the salient question about such change is not "Could it
happen?" but "When?"
"By 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is
happening."
MAP
GRAPH: TOO FRESH: declining salinity in the North Atlantic
PHOTO (COLOR): SHRINKING CAP: satellite views of the Arctic icecap,
in 1970 and 2003
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