Climate change as a national security issue, published in HS Wire, Feb. 22.

“The net conclusion is that weather is changing dramatically in specific regions, and the nature of the change is that we’re seeing more record high temperatures and many, many fewer low-temperature records.”

“The bottom line is that our national security depends on our ability to sustain and augment our scientific and technical capacity to monitor unfolding events and forewarn of important changes,” Baker said. “The imminent increase in extreme events will affect water availability, energy use, food distribution, and critical infrastructure — all elements of both domestic and international security.”Other potential effects, McElroy said, are tied to changes in an atmospheric circulation pattern called the Hadley circulation, in which warm tropical air rises, resulting in tropical rains. As the air moves to higher latitudes, it descends, causing the now-dry air to heat up. Regions where the hot, dry air returns to the surface are typically dominated by desert.

Full text of the 134 page report from Harvard University is here.

A related report that may be of interest: 2013 WorldWide Threat Assessment. (March 13, 2013)

Related articles

• Climate Change Linked To Extreme Weather And National Security (planetsave.com)
• Weather warning: Climate change a national security issue (scienceblog.com)
• CIA-funded Study: Global warming ‘may have contributed’ to the Arab Spring (junkscience.com)
• New Harvard Report on Climate Extremes and National Security (climateandsecurity.org)
• Tom Ridge: ‘Climate change is a national security threat’ (pennlive.com)

From Bloomberg News, Oct. 17. North America Has Biggest Rise in Weather Catastrophes

Climate change contributed to a fivefold increase weather-related natural disasters in North America over the past three decades, according to Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer.

“Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America,” Peter Hoeppe, head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research unit, told reporters in Munich today. There was a four-fold gain in disasters in Asia, while the number doubled in Europe, the reinsurer said.

In a related article, insurance and reinsurance are  likely to cost more.

Related articles

• North America Has Biggest Rise in Weather Catastrophes – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• Munich Re Says Capital Relief Driving Life Reinsurance Growth – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• Extreme Weather and Climate Change: North America Tops the List (switchboard.nrdc.org)
• Climate Change Causing Increased Risk From Extreme Weather, World’s Largest Reinsurance Company Says (treehugger.com)

In a preview of a major report due out Monday, comments from the lead author are noted here:

• Wash Post.
• Huff Post

The full text of the report, Perception of Climate Change, issued by the NAS, is now available.  [August 6, 2012]

A genuinely conservative point of view would be that the West, indeed much of America, is warming, that the fires in the Rocky Mountains could well become an annual event, and that those who choose, as I do, to live in the mountains now must calculate the risk they assume by living in timbered areas. Somehow, this cautious view, a characteristic of conservatism, is the new “liberal” for those who distrust overwhelming scientific evidence.

The neo-conservative or ideologically anti-scientific mindset is the topic for much consideration. It has to do with denying the facts when the facts don’t support your preconceived opinions. There is a history of this, including the Roman Catholic Church’s threatened excommunication of Galileo.

But for us true Western conservatives, the fires are here and they require soul-searching. Quite a number of people in my area are now storing family memorabilia in units in the city, anticipating an evacuation order that may provide only minutes to round up children and pets. It’s a new lifestyle. This is the hottest summer in my memory in Colorado. There is now a persistent drought. Crops are drying up. Streams are dry. The air is smoky. And the winters bring less snow and cold. Something is going on.

Even the cautious Economist newspaper now has a special section documenting the warming of the entire Arctic. The good news is that ships will now be able to use the Northwest passage. The bad news is that it opens up the entire region for multi-national oil and gas development which, of course, will produce more carbon fuel to accelerate the global warming. For money conservatives this is a welcome thing. For nature conservatives, like me, it is pure disaster, disaster of epic proportions.

How do you prevent catastrophe when no single individual or nation is responsible? When behavior, in this case carbon consumption, is universal, how do you alter behavior on a mass scale? The single, simple answer, of course, is tax the carbon. Place an escalating price on its use until masses of people quit using it. But the money conservatives have made taxes and the governments who enact them demons.

The great historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book called The March of Folly. Folly she defined as blind pursuit of a destructive policy with knowledge that a better alternative exists. That’s us, folks. There is a special place in hell, wrote the immortal Dante, for those who, in times of moral crisis, preserve their neutrality. How much worse place in hell must there be for those who perversely destroy Nature herself in the interest of money?

No one is responsible. We are all responsible. The black bears of the Rockies, actually a rich dark reddish-brown, are roaming the foothills with their cubs overturning trash barrels to stay alive. Meanwhile, their polar cousins are adrift on melting blocks of ice. I don’t want to live to see the last one die.

Related articles

• How to bet on climate change (guardian.co.uk)
• Heat wave, fires have climate change supporters on offensive (thehill.com

While most of the U.S. is suffering from excessive heat and more than 50% of the country is experiencing drought, it is a good time to strengthen our resolve to take actions to mitigate likely future hazards and threats.

From the OECD a report on Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes. The list of 20 cities, most of them major port cities throughout the world,  is quite sobering. Both the abstract and the full report (63 pages) are available at the URL noted above.