Guest ridicule by David Middleton
What’s missing from this article?
Trump’s skepticism aside, the Navy is taking climate change seriously
Gerald Harris, Medill News Service June 28, 2018
TAMUNING, Guam — The Trump administration has vigorously downplayed the threat of global warming, insisting that the science is still unproven.
But an increase in the number of severe storms combined with rising sea levels and surface temperatures are forcing the U.S. Navy to adjust to the mounting threat of climate change.
The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act has ordered the Pentagon to identify the top 10 military bases threatened by climate change for the Navy and the other service branches by November.
[…]
While the Navy has a long history of responding to weather-related catastrophes, a world-wide increase in extreme weather and climate-related civilian unrest has led to more requests for assistance from the Navy.
The demand could hamper naval readiness, said Ann C. Phillips, a retired rear admiral who spent 30 years in the Navy and is now a member of the advisory board of the Center for Climate & Security, a non-partisan think tank.
[…]
“By reputation Guam has the largest fuel capacity than any place in Asia, largest weapon capacity, so Guam is the base which the United States can project its power to this part of the world without asking anyone’s permission,” said Robert Underwood, the outgoing president of the University of Guam and a former Guam delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.
[…]
According to Austin Shelton, an assistant professor at the University of Guam and director of the Sea Grant research program, Guam is facing multiple challenges.
[…]
According to a report by the Center for Climate & Security released earlier this year, 200 military installations participating in a vulnerability assessment have already been affected by storm surge flooding.
A 2008 assessment found that only 30 military sites faced elevated risks because of sea level rise.
The article doesn’t cite a single U.S. Navy source. It cites:
- A retired Rear Admiral who works for the Center for Climate & Security.
- The Center for Climate & Security, a warmunist activist group.
- The “outgoing president of the University of Guam and a former Guam delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives,” a liberal Democrat.
- An “assistant professor at the University of Guam and director of the Sea Grant research program.”
I’m surprised they didn’t cite the world-renowned Guam expert, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Wt2EKE1j4
The article exhibits the standard warmunist trait of mis-conjugating verbs and making unsupported claims:
While the Navy has a long history of responding to weather-related catastrophes, a world-wide increase in extreme weather and climate-related civilian unrest has led to more requests for assistance from the Navy.
The demand could hamper naval readiness…
Unsupported claims:
- A worldwide increase in extreme weather: Unsupported
- Climate-related civilian unrest: Unsupported
- More requests for assistance from the Navy: Unsupported
Regarding the claim of a climate change driven increase in extreme weather, this is extreme horst (h/t Clyde Spencer) schist.
Compo et al., 2011 found no evidence “of an intensifying weather trend” during the 20th century.
Some surprising results are already evident. For instance, the long-term trends of indices representing the North Atlantic Oscillation, the tropical Pacific Walker Circulation, and the Pacific–North American pattern are weak or non-existent over the full period of record. The long-term trends of zonally averaged precipitation minus evaporation also differ in character from those in climate model simulations of the twentieth century.
The Weather Isn’t Getting Weirder
The latest research belies the idea that storms are getting more extreme.
By Anne Jolis
Updated Feb. 10, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET
Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions.
[…]
As it happens, the project’s initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. “In the climate models, the extremes get more extreme as we move into a doubled CO2 world in 100 years,” atmospheric scientist Gilbert Compo, one of the researchers on the project, tells me from his office at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “So we were surprised that none of the three major indices of climate variability that we used show a trend of increased circulation going back to 1871.”
In other words, researchers have yet to find evidence of more-extreme weather patterns over the period, contrary to what the models predict. “There’s no data-driven answer yet to the question of how human activity has affected extreme weather,” adds Roger Pielke Jr., another University of Colorado climate researcher.
Regarding the idiotic claim that the U.S. Navy’s operational readiness is being affected by Gorebal Warming… This is unmitigated bull schist!
December 14, 2017
A New Report Reveals Why the U.S. Navy Is in Big Trouble (And Offers a Solution)
Over the years, due to a brutal operations tempo and a shrinking fleet, the Navy has reached the breaking point.
by Dave Majumdar
he United States Navy has released its new Strategic Readiness Review (SSR), which was ordered by Navy Secretary Richard Spencer earlier this year in September. The SSR, as was expected, has revealed severe deficits in the U.S. Navy’s readiness level, which have led to a rash of accidents in recent month.
“The U.S. Navy is without question the most capable in the world but its primacy is being challenged as it sails into a security environment not seen since before the collapse of the Soviet Union,” the SSR reads. “Another era of sustained peer-on-peer competition has arrived and failing to recognize and prepare for its very different challenges will have severe consequences. Even in a non-peer-on-peer environment, the Navy and the nation can ill afford the readiness deficiencies revealed in the recent ship-handling incidents in the Pacific.”
Over the years, due to a brutal operations tempo and a shrinking fleet, the Navy has reached the breaking point. “Many of these deficiencies have been observed and authoritatively documented for years, however the naval capacity that had been built up for the Cold War masked their impact,” the report reads. “That past margin in ships, aircraft, and sailors enabled the Navy to make mitigating adjustments in fleet operations, training, maintenance, and funding to accomplish assigned missions. Today, those margins are long gone. A smaller fleet with fewer sailors is straining to meet the operational demands placed upon it.”
[…]
The U.S. Navy is stretched very thin protecting the national interests of these United States. Since the end of Cold War I, the Navy has had to manage a “shrinking fleet” and a steady, if not expanding, operational tempo. Note that neither “weather” nor “climate” is mentioned in the article. Nor are they mentioned in the report. This is the closest that the report got to climate change:
To define what each service provides, the service chiefs and the joint staff review and validate force requests (the demand) from the geographic combatant commanders and prioritize them for consideration. The output of this process is a recommendation to the Secretary of Defense regarding which naval assets will be made available to each geographic combatant commander (the supply). This Global Force Management Allocation Plan is reviewed quarterly and when unplanned requirements arise.13 These unplanned requirements can be in response to threat increases in theater, natural disasters, or changes in force availability. When one of these emergent requirements arises, a geographic combatant commander submits a Request for Forces.
Responding to requests for forces pressurizes the fleet, as it requires either diverting another ready unit that may be in line for another assignment or disrupting the maintenance and/or training phases of a unit not deemed ready in accordance with established Navy standards. Some Requests for Forces can be accommodated without disruption to near and long-term readiness by using only those units that are certified ready to deploy. However, the small fleet and the need for specific unit capabilities frequently limit the options to answer emergent mission requirements. For instance, in the case of hurricane relief, amphibious capability and helicopter capacity are likely to be the limiting functions; on the other hand, certain high end threats might require ballistic missile defense capable ships.
No schist Sherlock. Hurricane relief missions call for Gators & helo’s rather than Aegis-equipped DDG’s & CG’s.
One would think that if the the Navy was facing increasing demands for Gorebal Warming-related assistance, in might just have made it into a report on readiness challenges.
Mis-conjugated verbs
- The unsupported claims *have* led to more demand for assistance from the Navy.
- The increased demand *could* hamper naval readiness in the future.
If the Navy has faced more demand for Gorebal Warming relief missions, then any effect on readiness would have already occurred.
- A future demand could affect readiness.
- A demand that has already occurred would have affected readiness.
I think the author is making the common mistake of conflating model-based predictions with things that are happening or have already happened.
That said, the Navy should take climate change more seriously
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What is stressing the Navy out is a bigger mission scope than what they faced in the 1980’s, with half as many ships & ship types available. Plus, a tiny training budget relative to what is truly needed.
Yes. Just so….
Yes, and there is only one recruit training command now, at USNS Great Lakes. This may or may not have been a mistake, but we’ll see what happens in the long term. In my view, too many military bases were closed in the BRAC. At some point, we may need them again.
Yep. They could free up enough money to rebuild the fleet by zeroing this out…
https://www.gao.gov/mobile/key_issues/climate_change_funding_management/issue_summary
The Navy could even take over much of the climate science… They’re already in the ocean and have a vested interest in measuring water depth & temperature, the thermocline and halocline… 😎
The last photo in the post shows the latest LCS (Little Crappy Ship) delayed while in transit. Notice the wooden pier pilings in the foreground. Check out the condition of the hull in the vicinity of the second and third pilings. The hull absolutely looks likes it was shoved in by something.
Remember, this is a brand new ship, right out of the shipyard. Was the hull really caved in by a tugboat doing routine maneuvering?
The ship has an aluminum hull and is notoriously thin-skinned. I would bet there is a story in there somewhere.
From the Lockheed Martin Littoral Combat Ships web site:
“Hull: Advanced semi-planing steel monohull”
They are not “an aluminum hull and… notoriously thin-skinned”. Nor are they ‘ice breakers’. Their super structures are quite likely aluminum, as this helps lower the ships center of mass as well as the overall ship weight. It also improves the maneuverability of the ship ‘at speed’.
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/littoral-combat-ship-lcs.html
If you look at the following video and other pictures of these ships, you will see 2 dark ports on each side of the hull, with dark staining extending a bit aft. Exhaust ports of some sort? I don’t know, but they coincide with your ‘shoved in by something’ location. I think you misinterpreted what is shown in the headline photo of this story.
https://youtu.be/lTy0MhhUlYQ
Oops, my mistake.
Steel hull, Al superstructure.
It does look a bit of a mess, though.
The other LCS (Independence class) apparently is the one with the Al hull.
I think it looks great, especially at 45knots!
Oh, but wasn’t it sad that the crew had to spend the winter frozen in the ice (snort!!!) at Montreal??? Can’t you just sympathize with them? What a terrible burden they had to bear!!!
David, you should be teaching critical thinking classes (as if there were any such courses of study in post-modern academia).
From https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/PT.3.1257
If history is anything to go by, then rising sea levels are of benefit to the US navy 🙂
On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
hmm if i had seen that back then…I’d have tried to get correction
thousands yes
hundreds of thousands NO!
RADM Philips spent 30 years in the Navy? Okay, then what was her specialty, IF she had one? SecDef James Mattis spent his entire career in the Marine Corps in combat infantry. What did RADM Philips do? Was she in Meteorology? Oceanography? What? Female Admirals are rather rare. I met the first female Admiral (Duerk) Nurse Corps at NS Great Lakes in 1972.
Without that information, there is nothing but ‘she was an Admiral’ in this. No, she was a Rear Admiral and the author of that silly piece does not tell us if she was RADM Lower Half (O-7 – used to be Commodore) or Upper Half (O-8). Full pay grade in difference.
I can have a very good friend find out about this, but throwing someone’s name into something with no specifics means N-O-T-H-I-N-G. NOTHING.
The ship that was stuck in ice and wintered over at Montreal last winter was newly launched. We had quite a giggle over it. I’m sure those sailors suffered from being forced to eat French cooking and being presented with some very ordinary table wines! 🙂 Poor things!
The crew successfully adapted to the climate change.
Now the climate has changed again and they can go out to sea.
Sara, since you asked:
Rear Admiral Ann C. Phillips, USN (Ret) is a member of the Center for Climate and Security’s Advisory Board. A Surface Warfare Officer, Rear Admiral Phillips has served in every warfare group of the Surface Navy: Destroyers, Aircraft Carriers, Amphibious, and Replenishment Ships. During her 31 years on active duty she commissioned and commanded USS MUSTIN (DDG 89), and commanded Destroyer Squadron TWO EIGHT, and Expeditionary Strike Group TWO – which included all the Amphibious Expeditionary Forces on the East Coast of the United States. Ashore she was a Senior Fellow on the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group XXVIII, and managed requirements and resources for the Surface Navy as Deputy Director and Director of Surface Warfare Division, (N86) in the Pentagon. While at N86, from 2009-2012 she served on the Chief of Naval Operations’ Climate Change Task Force, and Energy Task Force, where she Co-Chaired the Surface Force Working Group – developing and implementing climate change adaptation and energy reduction strategies for the Navy. In addition, she has served overseas in Guam and Lisbon, Portugal, and operated extensively with NATO and Partnership for Peace nations.
That certainly gives her some war-fighting cred’s… Probably more than Oceanographer/Admiral David Titley (Ret), who is also part of the Center for Climate and Security’s Advisory Board.
Did the entire Chief of Naval Operations’ Climate Change Task Force, and Energy Task Force retire to the Center for Climate and Security’s Advisory Board when the Obama maladministration checked out?
https://climatesciences.jpl.nasa.gov/events/23/index.html
It doesn’t look like this has been updated since 2014…
http://navysustainability.dodlive.mil/climate-change/
“According to a report by the Center for Climate & Security released earlier this year, 200 military installations participating in a vulnerability assessment have already been affected by storm surge flooding.”
Which is to say that things that have happened in the past are still happening.
Seas have been rising at the same rate for thousands of years.
So a branch of the military has identified a potential threat that forces them, unfortunately, to increase spending. We have that in Sweden also. Every spring of a new budget period for the navy, the swedish coast is invaded by possible submarines, probably Russian. The media calls them budget-submarines, well not in print of course but in between collueges. It is important to keep funding high in case of future cuts, so they waste money, all gov institutions do inherently.
Naval Intelligence (not the section but the overall) has been diminished by the removal during the Obama Administration of any staff officers with a brain. When they leadership acquiesced to the plan to buy bio-diesel for battle vessels to go to sea @ur momisugly$74 /gal… I knew it was over.
response to threat increases in theater, –>
response to threat increases in weather,
“climate-related civilian unrest…”
Where?
Syria? Somalia? Ukraine? Seattle? Berkeley?