Scientific Alarmism Drives DoD Climate Policy
By Scott Sturman & Doug Goodman
January 30, 2024
Executive Order 14057 justifies the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions as necessary to counteract the existential threat of climate change. The program’s comprehensive and prohibitively expensive initiative proposes to transform the operational military by achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2045, purportedly on firmly established “science-based” targets that are validated by computer models and consensus within the scientific community. The plan's ambitious yet unrealistic goals, which are presented as an alarmist ultimatum, ignore the foundational principles of physics and battle-proven lessons of military history.
The Plan establishes emission objectives by determining “alignment with the scale of reductions required to limit global warming below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C.” These emission reduction targets come directly from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Net-Zero Paris Climate Accord. The IPCC is not a science based organization that conducts its own research but rather a governmental policy organization whose members are countries, not scientists, and whose representatives are bureaucrats who develop and promote international climate policy. The IPCC sponsors and filters climate science research generated from outside organizations to support its primary charter of establishing the man made causes and influences on climate change.
The narrative that the earth's climate balances precariously on the brink of catastrophe and merits the distinction of a national security priority is constantly presented to the public in familiar, apocalyptic terms. President Biden warns that global warming is the greatest threat to national security. DOD Secretary Austin alerts the public of existential climate threats, including an ice-free Arctic Ocean, although as of January 2023 the Arctic sea ice pack is at its highest since 2003. The DOD and high ranking officials from the navy, army, and air force proclaim that it is incumbent upon the armed services to implement net-zero without delay to avert a worldwide catastrophe. Despite the incessant fearmongering, no one appears to pause and consider that the DOD produces only 1% of the United State's CO2 emissions, which in turn is responsible for 13% of the world's total. Even if the DOD achieves net-zero, eliminating 0.13% of the world’s CO2 output would not detectably reduce global temperatures.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/01/30/scientific_alarmism_drives_dod_climate_policy_1008297.html
