Collide-a-scape

In a column published today, a scholar challenges the legitimacy of the climate security frame and suggests it is distracting from the real climate concerns that need to be addressed.

But before I get to that, some quick background. In recent months, a flurry of highly publicized papers have explicitly linked climate change to war and civil turmoil. If you’ve been keeping score, you know that this research is controversial and seemingly contradictory. And that the associated climate link derives from natural weather cycles and temperature swings, not man-made global warming. Let’s briefly recap.

In August, a study published in Nature found that

Tropical countries face double the risk of armed conflict and civil war breaking out during warm, dry El Niño years than during the cooler La Niña phase of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)…

The abstract of the paper declared:

This result, which indicates that ENSO may have had a role in 21% of all civil conflicts since 1950, is the first demonstration that the stability of modern societies relates strongly to the global climate.

A result like that garnered much media attention (see here and here, for example), but the study was also heavily criticized by some scholars.  At the same time, the news prompted constructive assessments of the state of the research on the climate/war linkage. Unsurprisingly, a study connecting civil conflict to warmer weather led some to infer:

That could be bad news as the global climate is changing in a generally warmer direction thanks to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere.

Some major related news came several days ago, with the publication of this PNAS paper, which concludes

that climate change was the ultimate cause of human crisis in pre-industrial societies.

But in this case, the culprit is colder weather. Specifically, the researchers assert:

Results show that cooling from A.D. 1560–1660 caused successive agro-ecological, socioeconomic, and demographic catastrophes, leading to the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century.

Unsurprisingly, some who like to point out every blizzard or cold snap as a supposed refutation of global warming have seized on this study.

Now there is a new lens to view all this research on climate change and war. It’s known as climate security, and I’ve written about it previously on numerous occasions. I think it’s fair to say that environmental scholars are ambiguous about the emergence of climate security as a call to action. For example, here’s some cautionary advice that one such expert offered in 2009.

Today, another scholar jumps into the climate change = conflict debate with some fresh concerns. Corinne Schoch, a researcher with the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, writes in this piece:

Over the past five years, climate change has moved from being a purely environment and development issue to being a matter of national and international security.

For years we have understood that civil wars generally break out as a result of political instability, a poor national economy, weakened infrastructures and, in the case of African states, the collapse of the Cold War. Now it seems that environmental shocks can be added to that list — journalists, academics, policymakers, security institutions and heads of states repeatedly tell us that the impacts of climate change pose a grave security threat.

As a result, the idea that prolonged heat waves, rising sea levels, more variable climates and more frequent disasters such as cyclones or droughts will result in more civil conflicts has taken firm root in the public’s imagination. The popular belief that climate change will soon spark ‘water wars’ between water-scarce regions and countries is just one example.

But while the notion that climate change could lead to conflict is widespread, it is based on very little evidence and questionable sources. The debate tends to be characterised by conjecture, extrapolations and a limited set of facts that make assumptions about how the climate will change in years to come, and how people will respond — for example, that increased climate variability automatically causes inter- and intrastate migration, or that a drop in rainfall led to the Darfur crisis. The links between what causes conflict have been simplified.

The truth is that there are, as yet, no concrete examples of violent conflicts induced by climate change, and a limited understanding of what the future holds.

This is a shot across the bow to proponents of the climate security frame. And it comes not from a political partisan or climate skeptic, but from a scholar whose expertise is the climate change/security nexus. In her piece, Schoch argues that the climate security rationale

risks sidelining or missing out completely issues such as adaptation, mitigation, development, economic growth, equity, justice and resilience, which do not figure as priorities on the security agenda but which are integral to addressing climate change.

In today’s world — filled with talk about ‘human-induced climate change’, ‘compensation’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘global justice’ — it is also important to ask ourselves to what extent the reframed climate-security debate is tackling the real drivers of climate change.

I look forward to hearing the answers she gets from the community of scholars and advocates who have helped put the issue of climate security front and center in the climate debate.

Climate security gets an airing today in a U.N. Security Council meeting. It’s not the first time the Security Council has taken up climate change. And wise heads, such as environmental security scholar Geoff Dabelko, offers some excellent pre-meeting context that puts the nascent climate security issue into perspective.

The Guardian also has a nice story on the meeting’s agenda. Those interested in how the U.S. intelligence and military establishment have assessed climate change in recent years should look here and here.

Nobody has done more to educate the masses about climate change than Al Gore. He’s written a best-selling book and inspired an Oscar-winning documentary. He’s been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for all his efforts.

This week Gore rolled out a new campaign to raise awareness of climate change. As Bryan Walsh observes,

Gore’s argument—and his point of attack—hasn’t really changed. He’s still set on disseminating the science…

Fanboy David Roberts at Grist sounds like he wants to chest bump the former Vice President:

As always, I find myself admiring Gore’s sheer doggedness. He’s going to explain this f*cking problem to you people as long as he has to for you to hear it. It hasn’t worked yet, but neither has anything else, and in the long run, my bet is always on persistence over cleverness.

Umm, nothing else but Gore’s approach has actually been tried.

So how long do you think Roberts will have to wait for Gore’s persistence to win out?

In the Guardian, Jules Boykoff takes stock of the seriousness with which national security experts inside and outside the U.S. military view climate change, a subject I’ve often take up here and elsewhere. As Boykoff drily notes:

This isn’t a tree-hugging festival. It’s the US military and its partners making clear-eyed calculations based on the best available climate science.

So, why this quiet camaraderie between scientists and military higher-ups? The answer, most certainly, is uncertainty.

Uncertainty is an inherent element of honest science. But in the political sphere, uncertainty has been harnessed as an alibi for denial and inaction. The military, however, operates under conditions of uncertainty all the time. Like scientists, they wade through the unknown to assess varying degrees of risk. As CNA Corporation put it, military leaders “don’t see the range of possibilities as justification for inaction. Risk is at the heart of their job.”

This is an issue that really should be aired out more in the climate debate. It would also be an opening for a much wider discussion on the whole spectrum of risk and climate change that some are claiming (legitimately, in my mind), is not being addressed:

There is a mismatch between the analysis of the severity of climate security threats and the political, diplomatic, policy and financial investment countries expend to avoid the attendant risks.

Boykoff, in his Guardian piece, says that Republican military hawks in Congress who are hostile to climate science are letting ideology trump national security concerns:

Climate cranks – many of them the same people perpetually hectoring us about the perils of national security – are choosing to ignore the seriousness of climate change even when the national-security experts they champion are telling us to do just that. Talk about cherry-picking data.

He makes a suggestion that I would second (but put differently):

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been holding shambolic hearings on climate change, should invite climate-minded national security gurus to testify. Perhaps they can lob some reality into the ideological fortress of denial before whipsaw climate volatility becomes our everyday reality.

First of all, there have been previous climate-related Congressional hearings, which have included testimony from both the intelligence community, and the U.S. military, on the implications of climate change for U.S. national security.

What would be better is a future hearing devoted just to the nexus of national security, energy and climate change, that is framed around risk scenarios that the U.S. military is taking seriously.

It must infuriate Joe Romm when people don’t take his word as gospel. Here’s how he opens his latest effort to slime a respected scholar and shape the climate narrative to his liking.

We’re starting to see pieces of counterfactual history on the climate bill in The New Republic and elsewhere based in part on discredited scholarship.

Of course, Romm being Romm, cites himself on that claim of “discredited scholarship.” He’s so classy that he doesn’t provide a link to Bradford Plumer’s studiously fair article in The New Republic. Romm also can’t bring himself (as of yet) to acknowledge where it is “elsewhere” that we’re seeing examples of this “counterfactual history.” (Nature, in this article and editorial, is thus far the most prominent publication to give Nisbet’s report a fair hearing.)

The other day I compared Romm’s relentless, attacking style to that of a famous pugilist. But his imperious proclamations are so cartoonish that he also reminds me of King Julien, a character from the hilarious Penguins of Madagascar movie and TV show. (One of the joys of being a parent of small children is having an excuse for arrested development.)

As I mentioned last week, I’ll be flagging my Frontier Earth posts in this space with a link. My latest, asking if security concerns can be an enduring focal point for climate and energy debates, is up. If you have any thoughts to share, please do so over there.

If you thought assigning attribution of individual weather disasters to global climate change was tricky business, imagine trying to establish a causal link between specific ecological problems and global warming.

In this commentary in Nature Climate Change, ecologist Camille Parmesan and her co-authors suggest not going there. It’s not that they think global warming doesn’t adversely affect the biological world; it’s just that it’s too difficult to quantify the measurable impact at an individual species level. The authors assert that there is

a complex interplay among habitat destruction, land-use change, exploitation and pollution, in addition to climate change. The emerging view is that interactions among drivers of change are the norm. For example, after a warming event, corals in overfished areas recovered more poorly from bleaching than those with intact food webs. Effects of habitat fragmentation also interact with those of climate change. Northwards expansion of the speckled wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria) in Great Britain progressed rapidly where barriers were minimal, but was hampered in regions where agriculture had rendered woodland habitat patches too scattered for individuals to find.

At a time when ecological problems are increasingly framed and discussed in the context of climate change, Parmesan and her coauthors are going against the grain with this rebuke (my emphasis):

By over-emphasizing the need for rigorous assessment of the specific role of greenhouse-gas forcing in driving observed biological changes, the IPCC effectively yields to the contrarians’ inexhaustible demands for more ‘proof’, rather than advancing the most pressing and practical scientific questions. This focus diverts energies and research funds away from developing crucial adaptation and conservation measures. To improve estimates of future biological impacts we need research focused on how other human stressors exacerbate impacts of climate change. Most importantly from a conservation standpoint, these other stressors are more easily managed on local scales than climate itself, and thus, paradoxically, are crucial to constructing adaptation programmes to cope with anthropogenic climate change.

The argument underlying this commentary was similar to one made two years ago in Slate by Brendan Borrell:

Climate change has the potential to displace the most impoverished human populations and bring about food shortages, flooding, and drought. But from the perspective of saving species, it’s a MacGuffin: a plot device that may impel the tired conservation narrative forward but is hardly a pragmatic strategy for preserving biodiversity.

Not to mix apples and oranges, but there is an interesting parallel with the recent injection of climate change into national security debates. Geoff Dabelko, noting the embrace of “climate security” as a new rhetorical term, in which socio/environmental and energy concerns have been packaged into a climate change box, has offered his own cautionary advice.

Don’t forget ongoing natural resource and conflict problems. The research and policy docket already is crowded with serious conflicts (as well as opportunities for cooperation) over resources, whether they are minerals, water, timber, fish, or land. While climate change certainly poses a large–and potentially catastrophic–threat in many settings, we must not overlook the ongoing problems of rapid population growth, persistent poverty, lack of clean water and sanitation, and infectious diseases that already threaten lives daily. Climate change will likely multiply these threats, but they will continue to exact a high toll even if the climate stabilizes. Presenting climate change as the number one concern and demoting other deadly threats is insensitive to the pressing problems faced by many people in poor and developing countries.

Similar pushback against the “collective fixation on global warming as the mother of all environmental problems” was expressed two years ago by Jonathan Foley:

In the rush to portray the perils of climate change, many other serious issues have been largely ignored. Climate change has become the poster child of environmental crises, complete with its own celebrities and campaigners. But is it so serious that we can afford to overlook the rise of infectious disease, the collapse of fisheries, the ongoing loss of forests and biodiversity, and the depletion of global water supplies?

Anyone seeing a common thread in all these cases?

There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about global warming being a “conflict accelerant” in volatile regions of the world. That discussion, which I’ve explored in articles and various blog posts, (see here and here) is focused on the potential geopolitical ramifications of climate change-related disasters (such as more frequent and severe floods, drought, and storms). But I’ve never heard anyone wonder if global inaction or unwillingness to curb greenhouse gases could conceivably trigger war between countries.

That is the hypothetical raised by a reader on this thread that otherwise takes up the question of whether a clean energy solution to climate change can best be arrived at by an authoritarian or democratic government. Here’s the provocative scenario that dares to be imagined (my emphasis):

China is doing more on the clean energy front and this is unquestionably in part due to its ability to avoid the morass of special interests that infect energy policy politics in democratic countries.  Just because that is so, however, does not mean that we aught to adopt a more autocratic form of governance.

On the other hand, there is ample precedent for curtailing of democratic freedoms in the face of existential threats as already noted up-thread.  Along those lines, here’s a question for you — at what point, if any, would it be reasonable for other countries to use the threat of force to impose carbon caps on other nation or nations?  Could GHGs ever be construed as a ‘clear and present danger’ that would justify the bombing of coal plants and hummers?

That question is loaded with dynamite. Anyone want to get close to it and have a go?

The Economist, in a rather one-sided article, is dubious about the increasingly touted link between climate change and human conflict. It’s true that the “climate wars” narrative is starting to take on a life of its own. I’ve even used the term as a headline in a post. But it’s also obvious (from the comment thread in that post) that environmental security experts are careful not to make direct links between climate change and war. Rather, what they often say is that climate change represents a “threat multiplier” in geopolitical hot spots, where a marginal environment, resource conflict and chronic state instability are already the norm.

That said, there is this recent video montage of U.S. generals and admirals expressing their deep concerns about climate change. Additionally, there is a whole other set of geopolitical issues that are now being seen through the climate security lens.

The Economist article signals that the broader assertions of climate-triggered conflict are about to be scrutinized more closely. In that sense, environmental security experts and military brass who warn about global warming ought to be prepared for the kinds of tough questions that climate scientists are routinely asked about their projections.

That brings us back to the elephant in the room: Uncertainty. In a previous thread on this blog, one commenter who works in intelligence talked about how the issue of uncertainty figures into policy debates on various national security threats. He saw interesting parallels to the climate policy debate. In an email, I asked “Andy” to elaborate on these similarities and also to comment on the video of military professionals expressing their concerns about climate change. After providing some of his background, “Andy” offers a perspective that I hope triggers a productive discussion on the intersection between risk, policy, and cost/benefit considerations.

*****

My experience is military intelligence – I’ve never worked for a civilian agency, though I’ve spent time working with people that do, obviously.  My current job involves unmanned aerial vehicles (predator and reaper mainly) in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I’ve been in the intelligence business for almost 20 years and my expertise is intelligence support to military forces, contingency planning and strategic warning.

The video montage is interesting. They are doing what military and intelligence people do – they see a potential threat which stimulates their institutional desire to contingency plan for that threat.  They see the scope of the threat and potential impacts are still uncertain but real enough to cause genuine concern.  One shouldn’t interpret this as a call-to-action for one’s preferred ideological solution. It’s actually a call for more analysis – not analysis of the science (which is outside their expertise) – but analysis of what can and should be done to address the problem.  The process for this in national security is contingency planning and to me, that is the key concept that I take away from the video, even though it’s not explicitly stated.

Good contingency planning doesn’t rely on fixed assumptions because plans made under today’s assumptions are likely to fail when they meet tomorrow’s reality. Rarely do our assumptions hold true over time.   Therefore we need a holistic and flexible approach which considers a variety of assumptions.  We need to consider resource allocation on a continuum and prioritize the potential threat of climate change under a variety of assumptions vs other potential and not-so-potential threats, interests and values.  We can’t afford to put all our eggs in one basket.

The military, for example, aspires to have a “full spectrum” force that can deal with humanitarian crises, high-intensity conventional warfare and everything in between.  Part of that includes planning for both likely and unlikely scenarios.  As a result the military is rarely fully-prepared for any one contingency, but is usually “prepared enough” for a wide range of contingencies.  That method of dealing with uncertainty has proven itself over time.  I personally believe (and this is probably the result of my own professional bias) that we need to prepare for climate change in a similar “full spectrum” manner, at least until there is sufficient political consensus to focus efforts in one area.

What is politically possible also needs to be considered simply because political structures (governments in this case) usually aren’t willing to suffer high opportunity costs unless the solution is a sure thing.  I think those who are predisposed to certain policy solutions need to keep that in mind – particularly those at the CAGW end of the spectrum.  From my armchair I think a lot of those advocates are shooting themselves in the foot.  Litmus tests regarding what is appropriate skepticism, for example, are not likely to generate the political support necessary to enable the policy you want – quite the opposite actually.  You’ll get high-fives from supporters and alienation from everyone else.  In order to achieve policy action on the scale you believe is required, you need to make the tent bigger, not smaller.  So it seems to me you are thinking tactically and not strategically – maybe you win some battles, but you risk losing the war.  Just something to think about.

One thing to keep in mind about senior military officers and national security people is that they are a parochial bunch who usually have bureaucratic interest in mind.  Despite all the intelligence reforms after 9/11, parochial interest still reigns and all the various agencies both cooperate and compete.  As our federal budget increasingly comes under intense pressure, you’re going to see a lot of people try to keep their organizations away from the budget ax by taking on new “threats.”  Climate change therefore represents an opportunity for parochialism that can’t be completely ignored when assessing the views of senior officials with budgetary skin in the game.  That’s a sad indictment of my own organization and profession, but I’ve seen it all too often to believe it will be any different regarding climate change.

Returning to the national security aspect of climate change for a minute, I think the focus will primarily be on consequence management because of the policy tools we have in the greater policy toolbox.  We are not equipped to deal with, for example, a carbon-reduction strategy.  The US military, in particular, has unique capabilities to quickly react to problems overseas – see the recent disaster in Haiti, for example.  Since our toolbox is limited and since we inevitably have our institutional parochialism, I doubt you will see many national security folks argue for a carbon reduction strategy if that will negatively impact their parochial interests (ie. budgets) – in other words, the military and national security bureaucracy will, in my judgment, tend to favor consequence management policies over carbon reduction.

Finally, one reason that I’ve become so interested in climate change is because it is very similar in character (but not content) to traditional national security problems.  I mentioned a few such problems in my earlier comment and I’ll focus on one here – nuclear terrorism.  Currently, this is deemed the preeminent threat to US national security (see here for a summary). This is a threat that’s difficult to quantify in terms of probabilities and there is a wide range of opinion on how to deal with it.  There are “denialists” who think it’s not much of a problem at all –so unlikely as to be irrelevant and thus requiring no policy change.  At the other end of the spectrum are those who think it’s only a matter of time before a US city gets nuked unless we take bold and decisive action now.  Does that dichotomy sound familiar?  Of course there is a middle-ground where we take reasonable, cost-effective measures to reduce the threat (increased security, better controls of nuclear material, better intelligence and detection), create and maintain capabilities to deal with the consequences should the threat materialize (response teams, medical and decontamination capabilities, etc.)  and work on a long-term solution to the problem (reduction/elimination of nuclear weapons, more limits and oversight of nuclear activities internationally, etc.).  Not coincidentally, those cost-effective measures have positive secondary effects in other areas.

Iran’s nuclear program is another example.  There are many uncertainties regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities.  Even if we assume the worst, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the sure-fire remedy – toppling the government through military force – would be the wisest option.  Actions have consequences and before formulating policy we need to be reasonably sure the cure won’t be worse than the disease.

In short, I see a lot of wishful thinking on both sides of the climate change debate rooted in unrealistic and unachievable policy preferences.  I can’t definitively speak to intentions, but my sense is that many people begin with a policy preference borne out of tribal ideology instead of thoroughly examining the problem in all its complexity. In my opinion, what we need is serious policy analysis that examine costs, benefits and risks and we need to create plans that include a variety of actions flowing from a variety of assumptions instead of considering only the policy we are predisposed to.

*****

What do you think of the framework Andy proposes for addressing the vexing issues of uncertainty, security threats and cost-benefit considerations?

Guess who’s asking the hard questions on climate science and policy. The U.S. military and geopolitical/security specialists.

Earlier this week, an array of of defense, national security and climate experts took part in a conference hosted by the Scripps Oceanography Center for Environment and National Security. This was the symposium agenda and here’s the opener from a story by Lauren Morello:

Tell us what you don’t know.

That’s the message military and national security experts gathered here want to send to climate scientists.

This follows on the heels of a panel event held earlier this month by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Environmental Change Security program. That discussion, between environmental security scholars and policy experts, explored

the unintended security consequences of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

The conversation there appears to have centered on the complicated interplay between energy policy, food security, environmental conservation and geopolitical concerns, among other things. Here’s a nice overview of the specific issues covered, and this summation:

The panelists stressed that taking actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change is necessary, but that we must evaluate the full range of potential effects of these strategies. “We need to blow open the box on how complicated these problems are,” [Cleo] Paskal said. “We need as many different people involved and as many different sorts of solutions as possible.”

Paskal is a climate security scholar, whose recent book Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises will Redraw the World Map, I reviewed several months ago for Nature.  (I have a longstanding interest in the environment/security nexus; here’s an exchange with experts and a related interview I conducted recently on this blog.)

To me, the calls for better forecasting and additional voices and options at the climate policy table is a good thing. In some popular quarters of the blogosphere, though, where climate change is of paramount concern (and political calculations are always present), this plea for more information by military and security experts is likely to be considered “unhelpful.” Heck, on one influential blog, raising such nettlesome issues that draws undue attention to any limitations of climate science and a preferred policy prescription, is liable to get you pegged as an “anti-science, climate disinformer/delayer.”