We’ve all seen John Kerry’s claims that global warming is now a “national security issue”. Kerry’s new TV commercial says: “Scientists and military experts agree: The next global hot spot won’t be a spot at all,” the TV ad warns, showing an image of the planet. “Global warming threatens our security.”
They don’t seem to think so in Australia.
AUSTRALIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY UNCONVINCED BY CLIMATE DATA
ABC News, 9 October 2009
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/09/2709035.htm?section=justin
By Margot O’Neill for Lateline
The science of climate change is too doubtful to dramatically change Australia’s national defence plans, according to a key adviser on the Australian Defence Force’s recent White Paper.
While the white paper acknowledges for the first time climate change is a potential security risk, it says large-scale strategic consequences of climate change are not likely to be felt before 2030.
A key adviser on the white paper, Professor Ross Babbage, says he is not convinced that climate change exists at all.
“The data on what’s really happening in climate change was looked at pretty closely and the main judgment reached was that it was pretty uncertain – it wasn’t clear exactly what was going on,” he said.
“When you look at that data, it really does suggest that there hasn’t been a major change in the last decade or so and certainly no major increase.
“So the sort of judgments that were required have to be fairly open at this stage.”
However Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has frequently put forward the opposite view, and other security analysts believe Defence should not be debating the basic science of global warming.
Anthony Bergin, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, says the ADF’s judgement goes against most scientific conclusions.
“There was no supporting evidence presented in the Defence White Paper for the judgement that there would be no strategic impacts of climate change for 30 years,” he said.
“It seems to run counter to most of the scientific judgements that are now concluding that impact of climate change is indeed faster and more severe than previous estimates.”
Overseas preparations
In the US and the UK, security agencies and the military are providing resources to prepare for potential new climate conflicts over water, food and refugees as well as increasingly frequent natural disasters.
They are also moving to ensure defence equipment will function in more extreme weather conditions.
Sydney University’s Professor Alan Dupont says the CIA in the US had the right approach.
“They accepted the scientific forecasts of the IPCC as their starting point because they thought they were not qualified to contest the scientific issues. And I would have thought the same applied to our own defence department.”
At the internationally respected Royal United Services Institute in London, Dr Tobias Feakin, the director of national security says the Australian white paper is out of step.
“Climate change is already happening, so to press pause on considering it as a strategic issue, I think, could be a mistake,” he said.
“The time cycles for buying equipment rotate in about 20-year cycles so you need to begin to make the decisions now to purchase the kinds of equipment that you’ll need for climate change world.
“So to not actually acknowledge the kind of changes that we will be seeing then, I think will be quite short-sighted.”
‘Cautious approach’
Because of long lead times and high expense, Professor Babbage says Defence moves cautiously when it comes to adopting new planning scenarios.
“At this stage there isn’t really the case to fundamentally change the direction of the Defence Force as a consequence of what we are so far seeing in terms of climate change, given the uncertainties that we still see in the data sets.
Professor Babbage says Defence considered a variety of climate scenarios and judged Australia’s current defence capabilities and force structure would cope.
He points out that Prime Minister Rudd, as chairman of the National Security Council, signed off on the white paper’s conclusions.
Copyright 2009, ABC
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Australian Government’s Defence White Paper is available at <http://www.defence.gov.au/whitepaper/docs/defence_white_paper_2009.pdf>
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
War is always the last resort of failed politicians. Always. And what is happening is failure of politicians around the globe. This AGW nonsense will only lead us, all of us, into the greatest war the world has ever seen. And the bands of every country of western culture will indeed be playing the countries’ equivalent of “Waltzing Matilda”.
We Americans will not willingly go back to another “dark ages” or live as life was lived in the Little Ice Age, when there isn’t a bit of truth in the AGW “theory” or any reason to do so. Hardly should be called a “theory”. At best, it is a bit of speculation, not even a decent hypotheses, which has been ballyhooed beyond belief by those who are either trying to get their “3 minutes of fame”, government grants, or just plain get rich on others stupidity and lack of scientific knowledge.
“It has already been mentioned in a couple off posts, but the ADF already operate in some of the most temperature extremes on the planet. If the temperature where to increase a few degrees, just what changes for them?”
We just turn the air conditioning up a little bit more & keep on shooting 🙂
Gene Nemetz, Wouldn’t it be great if they were talking about creating jobs.
Well, lucky us. Our Senator Milne representing the Greens (Yes we have a green party) said our recent dust storms and dry weather was a definite sign of AGW forgetting about good old El Nino a frequent visitor to our shores. But she has a plan. Reduce CO2 emissions by 25% by 2020, force the coal fired generators into insolvency with a big ETS tax and we will have green jobs installing insulation bats imported from China. Every one else forced out of jobs will be erecting windmills and PV panels. Oh and by the way the Greens are totally opposed to Nuclear energy. I’d be tempted to start making candles but they pollute too.
Australia wont need a defence force because no-one in their right mind would want to come to a country with no cars, lights or industry. Then again maybe old tree huggers would find it appealing.