Preface. Of all the branches of government, the military is the most on top of climate change, peak oil, pandemics, power grid failure, and other disasters. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, it’s their job to defend the U.S. against threats.
What I found interesting was that given the coming threats, the military is proposing new job opportunities for themselves in addition to fighting wars abroad. They anticipate that disorder from pandemics, climate change, financial crashes and more might require them to be here in U.S. to maintain order. The army also proposes to enable and defend arctic hydrocarbon resources, which climate change may make more available.
This study examines the implications of climate change over the next 50 years for the United States Army assuming that IPCC RCP 4.5 is our likely future to predict expected outcomes.
Related: you might want to read Nafeez Ahmed’s take on this report here: U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says. The report says a combination of global starvation, war, disease, drought, and a fragile power grid could have cascading, devastating effects.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com author of 2021 Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy best price here; 2015 When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity, XX2 report
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Brosig M, Frawley CP, Hill A, et al (2019) Implications of climate change for the U.S. army. U.S. Army War College. 52 pages
Sea level rise, changes in water and food security, and more frequent extreme weather events are likely to result in the migration of large segments of the population. Rising seas will displace tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people, creating massive, enduring instability. This migration will be most pronounced in those regions where climate vulnerability is exacerbated by weak institutions and governance and underdeveloped civil society. Recent history has shown that mass human migrations can result in increased propensity for conflict and turmoil as new populations intermingle with and compete against established populations. More frequent extreme weather events will also increase demand for military humanitarian assistance.
Salt water intrusion into coastal areas and changing weather patterns will also compromise or eliminate fresh water supplies in many parts of the world. Additionally, warmer weather increases hydration requirements. This means that in expeditionary warfare, the Army will need to supply itself with more water. This significant logistical burden will be exacerbated on a future battlefield that requires constant movement due to the ubiquity of adversarial sensors and their deep strike capabilities.
My caption: New jobs for the military
A warming trend will also increase the range of insects that are vectors of infectious tropical diseases. This, coupled with large scale human migration from tropical nations, will increase the spread of infectious disease. The Army has tremendous logistical capabilities, unique in the world, in working in austere or unsafe environments. In the event of a significant infectious disease outbreak (domestic or international), the Army is likely to be called upon to assist in the response and containment. They propose working closely with the CDC and relief plans.
As the electorate becomes more concerned about climate change, it follows that elected officials will, as well. This may result in significant restrictions on military activities (in peacetime) that produce carbon emissions. The Department of Defense (DoD) does not currently possess an environmentally conscious mindset. Political and social pressure will eventually force the military to mitigate its environmental impact in both training and wartime. Implementation of these changes will be costly in effort, time and money.
All of the plans require energy, here are plans that are directly energy related
In light of these findings, the military must consider changes in doctrine, organization, equipping, and training to anticipate changing environmental requirements. Lagging behind public and political demands for energy efficiency and minimal environmental footprint will significantly hamstring the Department’s efforts to face national security challenges. The Department will struggle to maintain its positive public image and that will impact the military’s ability to receive the required funding to face the growing number of security challenges.
[My comment: In a sly way, this study seems to acknowledge peak oil, though it’s stated as if the cause for lack of fuel will be the public’s awareness of climate change: “Problem: potential disruptions to readiness due to restrictions on fuel use”]
The decrease in Arctic sea ice and associated sea level rise will bring conflicting claims to newly-accessible natural resources. It will also introduce a new theater of direct military contact between an increasing belligerent Russia and other Arctic nations, including the U.S. Yet the opening of the Arctic will also increase commercial opportunities. Whether due to increased commercial shipping traffic or expanded opportunities for hydrocarbon extraction, increased economic activity will drive a requirement for increased military expenditures specific to that region. The study recommends training and equipment to conduct future Arctic operations.
Power grid vulnerabilities: improve grid near military installations and fund internal power generation from solar/battery farms and small nuclear reactors.
The Arctic
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), since satellite monitoring of the Arctic began in 1979, the Arctic ice extent has de creased from 3.5 – 4.1% (“Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report.” International Panel on Climate Change. 2015. http://ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ )
According to a 2008 U.S. Geological survey, the Arctic likely holds approximately one quarter of the world’s undiscovered hydrocarbon reserves, with 20% of them potentially in U.S. Territory.
Since territories aren’t well defined, this is mainly a Navy and Air Force issue, however the Army will be tasked with wide area security and reconnaissance roles as part of any joint efforts to secure Arctic interests.
Russia has embarked on a rapid build-up in the Arctic, including expensive refurbishment of Soviet era Arctic bases. Russia’s current Arctic plans include the opening of ten search and rescue stations, 16 deep water ports, 13 airfields and ten air defense sites. These developments create not only security outposts for Russia, but also threats to the U.S. mainland. Russia’s recent development of KH-101/102 air launched cruise missiles and SSC-8 ground launched cruise missiles potentially put much of the United States at risk from low altitude, radar evading, nuclear capable missiles.
POWER GRID STRESS
The power grid that serves the United States is aging and continues to operate without a coordinated and significant infrastructure investment. Vulnerabilities exist to electricity-generating power plants, electric transmission infrastructure and distribution system components. Power transformers average over 40 years of age and 70 percent of transmission lines are 25 years or older. The U.S. national power grid is susceptible to coordinated cyber or physical attacks; electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks; space weather; and other natural events, to include the stressors of a changing climate (Transmission & Distribution Infrastructure: A Harris Williams & Co. White Paper” Harris Williams & Co. 2014.)
If the power grid infrastructure collapsed:
- Loss of perishable foods and medications
- Loss of water and wastewater distribution systems
- Loss of heating/air conditioning and electrical lighting systems
- Loss of computer, telephone, and communications systems (including airline flights, satellite networks and GPS services
- Loss of public transportation systems
- Loss of fuel distribution systems and fuel pipelines
- Loss of all electrical systems that do not have back-up power
There are 16 critical infrastructure sectors (here) that would be affected by a blackout: chemical, commercial facilities, communications, critical manufacturing, dams, defense industrial base, emergency services, energy, financial services, food and agriculture, government facilities, healthcare and public health, information technology, nuclear reactors / materials / waste, transportation systems, water and wastewater systems.
The Congressional Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission, in 2008, estimated it would cost $2 billion to harden just the grid’s critical nodes. The Task Force on National and Homeland Security calculates an additional $10 to $30 billion and many years necessary for a complete grid overhaul. The EMP Commission further cited that some of the very improvements of network interconnectedness created through the updated Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) network, which control power distribution around the country, introduced additional weaknesses to cyber-attack.
Department of Defense installations are 99 percent reliant on the U.S. power grid for electrical power generation due to the decommissioning of autonomous power generation capability for budgetary cost saving measures over the last two decades.93
Global reductions in demand for hydrocarbons means that gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel should become less expensive. On the other hand, reduced demand tends to reduce incentives to explore potential oil fields or build new refining facilities. Much of the U.S.’s domestic oil extraction is unprofitable at oil prices below $30 a barrel. Technological advances tend to push this number lower, but exhaustion of oil fields tends to push the number higher. In all scenarios, global declines in oil consumption increase the sensitivity of oil markets to the choices of large consumers like the U.S. DoD.
The automated, A.I.-enhanced force of the Army’s future is one that runs on electricity, not jet fuel (JP-8). More efficient or resilient production of electricity through micro-nuclear power generation or improved solar arrays can fundamentally alter the mobility and the logistical challenges of a mechanized force. Light, quick-charging batteries (super-capacitors) have tremendous value in such a force; so does the wireless transmission of electrical current.
[many pages on climate change]
Then request for $100 million for fighting in middle eastern deserts: “The U.S. Army is precipitously close to mission failure concerning hydration of the force in a contested arid environment. The experience and best practices of the last 17 years of conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Africa rely heavily on logistics force structures to support the warfighter with water mostly procured through contracted means of bottled water, local wells and Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units (ROWPU). The ability to supply this amount of water in the most demanding environment is costly in money, personnel, infrastructure, and force structure. The calculations for water (8.34 pounds per gallon) in an arid environment equates to 66 pounds of water per soldier. Water is 30-40% of the force sustainment requirement. The Army must develop advanced technologies to capture ambient humidity.
Daily: Temperate 12.2 gallons, tropical 15.4, arid 15.8
Current planning methodologies remain heavily vested in bottled water meaning a more considerable force is needed to transport it.
In the 2000s in Iraq, over 864,000 bottles of water were consumed each month at one Forward Operating Base (FOB) with that number doubling during hotter months. Browne, Mathuel. “Marines Invest in New System to Purify Water on the Go.” Armed with Science: The Official US Defense Department Science Blog. 2017. http://science.dodlive. mil/2017/02/01/marines-invest-in-new-system-to-purify-water-onthe-go/.
ARCTIC OIL
Increased accessibility to the region for economic activity will consequently increase the security requirements and competition in the region. Currently Russia is rapidly expanding their Arctic military capabilities and capacity. The U.S. military must immediately begin expanding its capability to operate in the Artic to defend economic interests and to partner with allies across the region.
As ice melts there will be increased shipping, population shifts to the region and increased competition to extract the vast hydrocarbon resources more readily available as the ice sheets contract. These changes will drive an expansion of security efforts from nations across the region as they vie to claim and protect the economic resources of the region.
the competition for resources in the Arctic will increase security requirements and the potential for conflict. The Army will not be excluded from those requirements or any conflict that develops. The Army will simply be unprepared for the mission and the environment in which it will occur. As Russian activity expands in the Arctic, both the Navy and the Air Force will compete for resources to meet the Russian threat. The Army must compete as well
The Army needs to focus on the development of an infantry carrier vehicle with low surface pressure to maximize maneuverability in adverse terrain. An amphibious capable vehicle that has high weight distribution characteristics across the drive (either wheeled or tracked) contact patches will increase the speed of maneuver necessary for units to conduct wide area security across greater coverage areas.
PANDEMICS AND DISEASE (from climate change, yet more jobs for the army): As the largest source of potential capacity and capability to respond to widespread disease outbreaks in the United States, the military should be prepared to execute defense support to civil authority (DSCA) missions of this type.
NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY
Currently, the Department of Energy conducts tritium production using 2 to 4 commercial nuclear pressurized water reactors (PWRs) run by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). This commercial capability currently meets the U.S. stockpile tritium production capability; however, due to the overall age of the U.S. nuclear power industry, future PWRs may not be available to continue tritium production.168 The loss of tritium production directly reduces the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear stockpile by reducing or hindering the overall yield produced by the nuclear warheads. Without an effective U.S. nuclear stockpile, the U.S. cannot deter peer nuclear competitors and rogue nuclear states increasing the risk to all-out war against the United States.
Directly tied to tritium production is the future of the nuclear power industry. It is filled with an aging fleet of reactors built in the late 1960s and 1970s. Most receive a commercial license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to operate on average 30 years, but many have or are seeking extensions to increase the operations out to 40 and 50 years.170 The age of the industry and the lack of new reactors coming on-line creates a significant risk to both the environment and the maintenance of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. “The highest priority of nuclear innovation policy should be to promote the availability of an advanced nuclear power system 15 to 20 years from now”.
Increasing the underlying U.S. baseline nuclear power generation capability from a mere 20% (and declining) to more than 80% (to cover the 60% coal production capability that currently exists) can significantly reduce greenhouse gases.172 The government will need to lead this expansion which goes against the fossil fuel business paradigms that have existed for more than 100 years. Any nuclear industry expansion must include a long-term review of tritium production requirements and analyze how the government will maintain its required tritium production capability.
[natters on and on about need for nuclear, tritium for bombs, no mention of how to dispose of nuclear waste, the lesson learned from Fukushima that it’s the spent nuclear fuel pools not in a containment vessel that are the real hazard (see “A Nuclear spent fuel fire at Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania could force 8.8 million people to evacuate” ]
CONCLUSION
It is useful to remind ourselves regularly of the capacity of human beings to persist in stupid beliefs in the face of significant, contradictory evidence. Mitigation of new large-scale stresses requires a commitment to learning, systematically, about what is happening.
Life is full of the unexpected, or the overlooked obvious. The term “black swan event” describes surprises of an especially momentous and nasty type. Popularized by the mathematician Nicholas Nassim Taleb in his 2007 book of the same title, Taleb argued that black swan events have three characteristics: “rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability.”176 In recent years, the concept of black swan events has gained currency in political, military, and financial contexts.
The black swan has a venerable history as an illustration of the ancient epistemological problem of induction: simply stated, no number of observations of a given relationship are sufficient to prove that a different relationship cannot occur. No amount of white swan sightings can guarantee that a different color swan is not out there waiting to be seen.
Three maxims can help us avoid dangerous failures of recognition, and speed learning when unexpected things happen.
1. Everything we believe about the world is provisional – “serving for the time being.” Adding the words “so far” to assertions about reality reminds us of this.
2. Unjustified certainty is very costly. The greater your certainty that you are right when you are wrong, the longer it will take you to recognize and incorporate new data into your system of belief, and to change your mind. General Douglas MacArthur was a confident man, and this confidence usually served him well, such as when he undertook the risky landings at Incheon in the Korean War. Yet MacArthur’s confidence betrayed him when China entered the war. He was certain that this would not happen, and MacArthur’s certainty delayed his recognition of a key change, exposing forces under his command to terrible risk. Confidence in your beliefs is valuable only insofar as it results in different choices (e.g., I choose A or B). Beyond that point, confidence has increasing costs.
3. Pay special attention to data that is unlikely in light of your current beliefs; it has much more information per unit, all else equal. In this sense, information content is measured as the potential to change how you think about the world. Information that is probable in light of your beliefs will have minimal effects on your understanding. Improbable information, if incorporated, will change it.