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Climate
Collapse
The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
The climate could change radically, and fast.
That would be the mother of all national security issues.
FORTUNE
Monday, January 26, 2004
By David Stipp
Global warming may be bad news for future
generations, but let's face it, most of us spend as little time worrying
about it as we did about al Qaeda before 9/11. Like the terrorists,
though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit home sooner and harder
than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become so real that the
Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.
The threat that has riveted their attention
is this: Global warming, rather than causing gradual, centuries-spanning
change, may be pushing the climate to a tipping point. Growing evidence
suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that controls the world's climate can
lurch from one state to another in less than a decade—like a canoe
that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. Scientists don't
know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt climate
change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the need
to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the
geopolitical balance of power.
Though triggered by warming, such change
would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to
longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would
cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to
ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or
imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or
Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt
climate change.
Climate researchers began getting seriously
concerned about it a decade ago, after studying temperature indicators
embedded in ancient layers of Arctic ice. The data show that a number of
dramatic shifts in average temperature took place in the past with
shocking speed—in some cases, just a few years.
The case for angst was buttressed by a theory
regarded as the most likely explanation for the abrupt changes. The
eastern U.S. and northern Europe, it seems, are warmed by a huge Atlantic
Ocean current that flows north from the tropics—that's why Britain, at
Labrador's latitude, is relatively temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air,
this "great conveyor" current gets cooler and denser as it
moves north. That causes the current to sink in the North Atlantic,
where it heads south again in the ocean depths. The sinking process draws
more water from the south, keeping the roughly circular current on the go.
But when the climate warms, according to the
theory, fresh water from melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North
Atlantic, lowering the current's salinity—and its density and tendency
to sink. A warmer climate also increases rainfall and runoff into the
current, further lowering its saltiness. As a result, the conveyor loses
its main motive force and can rapidly collapse, turning off the huge heat
pump and altering the climate over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Scientists aren't sure what caused the
warming that triggered such collapses in the remote past. (Clearly it
wasn't humans and their factories.) But the data from Arctic ice and other
sources suggest the atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses
were dismayingly similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age began
drawing to a close about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in
Greenland rose to levels near those of recent decades. Then they abruptly
plunged as the conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in the
"Younger Dryas" period, a 1,300-year reversion to ice-age
conditions. (A dryas is an Arctic flower that flourished in Europe at the
time.)
Though Mother Nature caused past abrupt
climate changes, the one that may be shaping up today probably has more to
do with us. In 2001 an international panel of climate experts concluded
that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the global warming
observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human
activities—mainly the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal,
which release heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Indicators of the warming
include shrinking Arctic ice, melting alpine glaciers, and markedly
earlier springs at northerly latitudes. A few years ago such changes
seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or grandkids. Today they
seem portents of a cataclysm that may not conveniently wait until we're
history.
Accordingly, the spotlight in climate
research is shifting from gradual to rapid change. In 2002 the National
Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that human activities could
trigger abrupt change. Last year the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, included a session at which Robert Gagosian, director of the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, urged policymakers
to consider the implications of possible abrupt climate change within two
decades.
Such jeremiads are beginning to reverberate
more widely. Billionaire Gary Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted
abrupt climate change as a philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also
discovered the issue—next summer 20th Century Fox is expected to release
The Day After Tomorrow, a big-budget disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid
as a scientist trying to save the world from an ice age precipitated by
global warming.
Fox's flick will doubtless be apocalyptically
edifying. But what would abrupt climate change really be like?
Scientists generally refuse to say much about
that, citing a data deficit. But recently, renowned Department of Defense
planner Andrew Marshall sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips
with the question. A Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the
Defense Department's "Yoda"—a balding, bespectacled sage whose
pronouncements on looming risks have long had an outsized influence on
defense policy. Since 1973 he has headed a secretive think tank whose role
is to envision future threats to national security. The Department of
Defense's push on ballistic-missile defense is known as his brainchild.
Three years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a
sweeping review on military "transformation," the shift toward
nimble forces and smart weapons.
When scientists' work on abrupt climate
change popped onto his radar screen, Marshall tapped another eminent
visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write a report on the national-security
implications of the threat. Schwartz formerly headed planning at Royal
Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted with organizations ranging from
the CIA to DreamWorks—he helped create futuristic scenarios for Steven
Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz and co-author Doug Randall at
the Monitor Group's Global Business Network, a scenario-planning think
tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate experts and pushed them
to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away from—at least in
public.
The result is an unclassified report,
completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with
FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a
dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping
strategies. Here is an abridged version:
A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might
lead to a big chill like the Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far
south as the coast of Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily
slow down, potentially causing an era like the "Little Ice Age,"
a time of hard winters, violent storms, and droughts between 1300 and
1850. That period's weather extremes caused horrific famines, but it was
mild compared with the Younger Dryas.
For planning purposes, it makes sense to
focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy
weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years
ago fits the bill—its severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas
and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a
conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's
global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of
the things that might happen by 2020:
At first the changes are easily mistaken for
normal weather variation—allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a
"blip" of little importance and leaving policymakers and the
public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that
something drastic is happening. The average temperature has fallen by up
to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and
up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average
temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15
degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key
agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly
30% in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's.
Violent storms are increasingly common as the
conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A particularly severe
storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands, making
coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable. In California the delta island
levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct
system transporting water from north to south.
Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in
the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average
than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S.
is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its
diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That
has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and
fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America.
Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to
build a fortress around itself to preserve resources. Borders are
strengthened to hold back starving immigrants from Mexico, South America,
and the Caribbean islands—waves of boat people pose especially grim
problems. Tension between the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on
a 1944 treaty that guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into
Mexico. America is forced to meet its rising energy demand with options
that are costly both economically and politically, including nuclear power
and onerous Middle Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic
losses.
Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop,
struggles to deal with immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes
to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit
countries in Africa and elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps
buffer it from catastrophe.
Australia's size and resources help it cope,
as does its location—the conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern
Hemisphere. Japan has fewer resources but is able to draw on its social
cohesion to cope—its government is able to induce population-wide
behavior changes to conserve resources.
China's huge population and food demand make
it particularly vulnerable. It is hit by increasingly unpredictable
monsoon rains, which cause devastating floods in drought-denuded areas.
Other parts of Asia and East Africa are similarly stressed. Much of
Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level,
which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries whose diversity
already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are hard-pressed
to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding changes.
As the decade progresses, pressures to act
become irresistible—history shows that whenever humans have faced a
choice between starving or raiding, they raid. Imagine Eastern European
countries, struggling to feed their populations, invading Russia—which
is weakened by a population that is already in decline—for access to its
minerals and energy supplies. Or picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil
and gas reserves to power desalination plants and energy-intensive
farming. Envision nuclear-armed Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at
their borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or
Spain and Portugal fighting over fishing rights—fisheries are disrupted
around the world as water temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to
new habitats.
Growing tensions engender novel alliances.
Canada joins fortress America in a North American bloc. (Alternatively,
Canada may seek to keep its abundant hydropower for itself, straining its
ties with the energy-hungry U.S.) North and South Korea align to create a
technically savvy, nuclear-armed entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc
to curb its immigration problems and protect against aggressors. Russia,
threatened by impoverished neighbors in dire straits, may join the
European bloc.
Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil
supplies are stretched thin as climate cooling drives up demand. Many
countries seek to shore up their energy supplies with nuclear energy,
accelerating nuclear proliferation. Japan, South Korea, and Germany
develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt, and North Korea.
Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb.
The changes relentlessly hammer the world's
"carrying capacity"—the natural resources, social
organizations, and economic networks that support the population.
Technological progress and market forces, which have long helped boost
Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the crisis—it is too
widespread and unfolds too fast.
As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an
ancient pattern reemerges: the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over
food, water, and energy supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc
has noted, wars over resources were the norm until about three centuries
ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males
usually died. As abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come
to define human life.
Over the past decade, data have accumulated
suggesting that the plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than
most of the scientific community, and perhaps all of the political
community, are prepared to accept. In light of such findings, we should be
asking when abrupt change will happen, what the impacts will be, and how
we can prepare—not whether it will really happen. In fact, the climate
record suggests that abrupt change is inevitable at some point, regardless
of human activity. Among other things, we should:
•
Speed research on the forces that can trigger abrupt climate change, how
it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.
•
Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play out, including
ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on key food-producing
regions.
•
Identify "no regrets" strategies to ensure reliable access to
food and water and to ensure our national security.
•
Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive migration, and food
and water shortages.
•
Explore ways to offset abrupt cooling—today it appears easier to warm
than to cool the climate via human activities, so there may be
"geo-engineering" options available to prevent a catastrophic
temperature drop.
In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change
remains uncertain, and it is quite possibly small. But given its dire
consequences, it should be elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now
matters, because we may be able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and
we can certainly be better prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it
as a national security concern.
The Pentagon's reaction to this sobering
report isn't known—in keeping with his reputation for reticence, Andy
Marshall declined to be interviewed. But the fact that he's concerned may
signal a sea change in the debate about global warming. At least some
federal thought leaders may be starting to perceive climate change less as
a political annoyance and more as an issue demanding action.
If so, the case for acting now to address
climate change, long a hard sell in Washington, may be gaining influential
support, if only behind the scenes. Policymakers may even be emboldened to
take steps such as tightening fuel-economy standards for new passenger
vehicles, a measure that would simultaneously lower emissions of
greenhouse gases, reduce America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its
trade deficit, and put money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yes—and give the
Pentagon's fretful Yoda a little less to worry about.
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