Essay by Eric Worrall
The US Navy is holding an open source table top war game, to model how climate change could affect future conflicts.
Navy Holding Climate Change Wargame
By: Mallory Shelbourne
June 21, 2022 4:30 PMThe Navy next week will host an open-source table-top wargame to experiment with how climate change could affect a future conflict, a service official said today.
The half-day exercise will feature individuals from Capitol Hill, the Defense Department, the defense industry, think tanks and academia, Navy assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment Meredith Berger told reporters during a Defense Writers Group breakfast.
The purpose of the June 29 exercise is “to come together and really think about and experience what it means to operate in a climate-impacted environment,” Berger said.
“We’re going to create the right level of stress in a very responsible way to see that it is hard to make these choices and there [are] unanticipated consequences and there’re costs and impacts and all sorts of intervening circumstances that we need to think about from each other’s perspectives,” she added.
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“By 2030, poorer nations and poorer populations are most adversely affected and lease able to cope with the worst effects of climate change. Migrations increase in frequency and scale as the poor move toward the urban littorals,” the document reads. “Influxes of people of difference religions, ethnicities, tribes, and family and belief systems create new tensions. Moreover, increasing migration begins to overburden social welfare infrastructure in places already struggling to cope with societal issues.”
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Each military service now has a chief sustainability officer in an effort to follow President Joe Biden’s executive order on sustainability, Berger said. That position is held by each service’s civilian head for energy, installations and environment.
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Read more: https://news.usni.org/2022/06/21/navy-holding-climate-change-wargame
If the US Navy thinks climate change is likely to lead to security threats, such as when “influxes of people of difference religions, ethnicities, tribes, and family and belief systems create new tensions”, maybe the USA should anticipate this climate threat by securing vulnerable borders with walls?
And just what are the impacts to be modeled? Could it be storms, or higher temp water raising havoc with ship cooling systems? Nope because storms are not changing and sea water surface temp may be up a tiny bit but not enough to notice. I know! Its running out of ship fuel because of Bidens anti-oil/gas programs. How to fight a war when the ships are dead in the water! Even the nucs can’t operate without lubricating oil. Sounds like fun.
The USN has gone WOKE to the max. They just released a training video on the correct use of pronouns, for the bisexual, the transsexual, and transgendered of the fleet. They are now helpless to defend the interests of the US. They can no longer counter China as a becoming hostile power.
Here is a retired Navy Commander of the wokeness of the USN:
http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2022/06/secnav-promotes-official-religion.html
“Serious ideas and people are needed for a serious time.”
Here is the same Commander on China in SE Asia:
http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2022/06/chinas-new-cambodian-naval-base-nice.html
“the People’s Republic of China steadily, calmly, and with shocking regularity … progresses along one of her lines of operation, clicking off decisive points as she goes.“
I wonder if the US Navy has incorporated the fact that China launched its third aircraft carrier in their little game.
“Each military service now has a chief sustainability officer in an effort to follow President Joe Biden’s…”
The Nazis and the Communists would also have such a Political Officer to make sure everyone was following the leader’s vision.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Can’t see how a small few degrees over the next 100 yrs, mostly in the politically quieter polar regions even by the word of the IPCC itself, would have a noticable difference compared to fighting in the weather of the moment.
The 1930’s and up to 1941 saw increasing temps up to about the same level as now, then followed by a sudden drop through the 40’s, several battles fought in the coldest weather ‘evah’.
Don’t forget to claim agency stupidity if anything goes wrong…….
Forest Service failed to account for climate change in New Mexico fire (cnbc.com)
It wasn’t climate change that caused the USFC to miscalculate. They failed to monitor existing temperatures, precipitation, dryness of the vegetation, current and projected weather patterns, including wind conditions & etc. It will turn out to be nobody’s fault because … climate change.
Half a day. Uh-huh. I suspect the US Navy officials are doing this out of some kind of obligation or for Brownie Points or whatever, because a half-day tabletop “war game” isn’t even up to the level of the table-top war games my friend plays every year at a gaming convention in Stratford, Ontario.
Half a day of beer and craps on their climate change budget. What navy could resist ?
I just hope the remainder of the Greatest Generation and WW2 vets don’t not see this news.
Ooh, ooh, ooh… a tabletop game! How about Battleship? … F7. Boom!!! My tropical storm just sank your cruiser!
The squids have always been known to be a little woo-hoo, but this has got to be over the top (or under the keel)!
Littorals – I’m guessing the writer heard some admirals talking about littorals and didn’t bother to look the word up. Littorals are land that gets covered by the tide. That’s thing one.
Thing two. Denigrating diversity is way politically incorrect. The writer should be sent to diversity reeducation camp. Geez they sound like a rabid Trumpster. 🙂
“Influxes of people of difference religions, ethnicities, tribes, and family and belief systems create new …
& diverse learning experiences that result in inclusion based problem solving, which will, of course, alleviate tensions and lead to and end of all wars. WAR GAME OVER
I’m wondering if some of them are messing with miss pretty eyes, the ethnicity thing leads to the logical conclusion a wall is needed – something a Trump supporter might try to insert into the narrative as a joke.
Putin the Great must love this. Makes it easier to conduct a Make Russia Great Again campaign when the enemy is busy fighting phantoms.
The weather forecast mattered on D-Day.
“Climate” forecast are as useless in combat as they’ve been the last 30 or 40 years.
(Except to politicians.)
The US (Continental Navy) Navy has been around since 1775. By now they’ve experienced both the weather (Yes, as in the D-Day decision) and almost 250 years of changing climate. And NOW they need some ridiculous and useless war gaming to understand how “climate” could affect the world’s largest Navy? I don’t see how they can even announce this crap with a straight face.
Would that be this Navy? I can imagine what that will be like.
Made me think this oldie.
https://youtu.be/ZjayK62XBCE
Considering that in WWII allied forces operated in everything from sweltering desert and jungle theatres to below zero winter conditions, one would think the modern forces could at least do as well in an increase of 0.2 degrees overall.
Only if we don’t go Green and Woke.
What, they’ll use soap powered bathtub boats and fly the Trans American Flag?
FACEPALM
A half day, wow. I imagine really only really important people are invited. This looks like psycho exercise to impress the importance of how they are wasting money and resources.
Oh, goody, I love the game “Battleship” . . . so, let’s give it a go.
I’ll take a shot at E7 because I’m pretty sure there’s a big buildup of CO2 right there!
The enemy has developed a new “death ray” that does not allow attacks on E7 🙂
Is that Death Ray a CO2 laser?
From the article: “Influxes of people of difference religions, ethnicities, tribes, and family and belief systems create new tensions. Moreover, increasing migration begins to overburden social welfare infrastructure in places already struggling to cope with societal issues.”
That sounds like a description of the southern border of the United States today, and the consequences of Biden’s open border policy.
These civilian overseers of the military ought to play their climate change war games there where they can deal with a real situation. Of course, the problems at the U.S.southern border don’t spring from climate change, they spring from Joe Biden stupidity and delusion. But the military can pretend it’s climate change.
The half-day exercise will feature individuals from Capitol Hill, the Defense Department, the defense industry, think tanks and academia, Navy assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment Meredith Berger told reporters during a Defense Writers Group breakfast.
“We’re going to create the right level of stress in a very responsible way to see that it is hard to make these choices and there [are] unanticipated consequences and there’re costs and impacts and all sorts of intervening circumstances that we need to think about from each other’s perspectives,” she added.”
Simple one on one table top war games can take a couple days to play.
I’m sure China knew about this before this was announced to the press. China might’ve programmed the game for the Pentagon.
Half a day that teaches no military lessons. Identifies absolutely zero about Naval leadership skills but, demands stress, fear and “costs and impacts and all sorts of intervening circumstances”.
A half-day shindig that will likely cost half a million dollars, but with coffee and lunch served.
“We’re going to create the right level of stress in a very responsible way…”
Hmmm … Are the going to leave the windows in the room open all night to sabotage the AC system?
How utterly ridiculous. An embarrassment to the US.
Hopefully these people are only doing this because they are forced by Biden’s executive orders. Surely they’re just playing along because they know he’s an idiot.
Hard to say
From what I’ve read the Navy Secretary was selected specifically because he is a true believer in this idiocy.
An idiot.
“How utterly ridiculous. An embarrassment to the US.”
Good way to put it.
The Democrats are an embarrassment fo the U.S.
I will wait for the SLR to sink the ships. 😉
“Each military service now has a chief sustainability officer in an effort to follow President Joe Biden’s executive order on sustainability, Berger said,”
I would love to know how the nuclear reaction chief, balances sustainability with mutually assured destruction….?
Four letters. Starts with W, ends with shamelessly self pleasuring yourself under the mistaken belief you are doing something important.
And at so many levels.
First up, an open source table top wargame involving every man and their dog to be held over a half a day.
Let us think about this. Speaking from personal experience of using a publicly available simulation tool (ADLG 4th edition) my like minded friends and I regularly wargame on Friday evenings to discover the important questions on if it is better to take the extra elephant while downgrading your spear to mediocre, or if you are better off just to field Sumerians for the giggles just because you always liked the idea of a battle cart pulled around by four Onagers.
Over the course of about 4 hours we eat a lot of snacks, talk rubbish and give each other positive feedback on our painting skills.
My point – you do not get a lot of gaming down in 4 to 5 hours. If you get a bigger group of people then you get bigger distractions and more people that need to have the game mechanics and other ‘rules’ explained to them.
So a group coming together for half a day? That four letter word starting with W comes up again.
Expanding on this to run a game you need the ‘model’ to hang the system off. Now first up ‘model’. We all know about ‘models’ don’t we?
Assumptions are made about how things will interact and either the game engine or the umpires will make/produce answers to variable situations. The quality of the outcome is directly based on how well the game engine and/or umpires understand the topic they are simulating OR how well the believe they understand the topic.
Models. We know about models.
So we get a large group coming in for a limited period (8 hours is NOT a lot of time to get games done) based on a ‘game engine’ that must be completely subjective.
Four letters. W.
The other consideration is the minds of the ‘players’. In one of my gaming circles we had the lore of the 9:30 rule. Basically this could be summed up as ‘It is getting late and I need to go to work tomorrow, hurry up and attack something so we can at least get some action happening’.
So we would set up a situation carefully over a number of terms using careful and pragmatic tactics and then… sod it, charge the machine guns so we can finish the game before midnight.
Any learning experience that might be gathered by exploring a historical situation is completely blown away by the fact this is also a social gathering and various wives expect various husbands home by 11pm.
All this is a glorified social gathering where various career public service types can go and get a free lunch and chance to meet peers from different departments while largely goofing off on a topic they don’t really understand but will make a good press report.
Studying the affects of climate change on future war? In an afternoon?
Four letters. W.
(also, if anyone knows some good reasonably detailed rules for gaming the ‘Norman Era’ of European warfare in 15mm as a preference let me know. Been reading on the White Ship and curious about gaming in that period.)
yea it’s a sort of War Thunder but with the electric MBT, the electric aircraft carrier and the electric fighter plane Hahahahaaha!
Here’s the outcome – the side with enough fuel for its ships, planes, etc., wins.
This ia wargame. Tactics may win wargames but logistics wins wars.
I guess the navy’s new ships will be 300 cubits by 50 cubits by 30 cubits to ensure optimal survivability on rising sea levels.
The US Navy is going to conduct a “War on Fossil Fuels Game”?
We lose. Game over.