SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A story notes that
[...] according to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.
[...] The report paints a frightening portrait of a country falling apart over the next 20 years due to the impacts of climate change on "natural systems such as oceans, lakes, rivers, ground water, reefs, and forests.
Current infrastructure in the US, the report says, is woefully underprepared: "Most of the critical infrastructures identified by the Department of Homeland Security are not built to withstand these altered conditions."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday October 28 2019, @02:00AM (9 children)
"climate change is gonna bring down the US military!!!!"?
Gimme a fucking break. Jesus fucking Christ this current band of lunatics have taken a reasonable course of action (weaning ourselves off fossil fuels) and transformed it into cult that out-crazies the Scientologists (and those are some real crazies).
Many things can bring down a military. But climate change? My eyes are rolling out of my head. No, what this is is nothing more than a clumsy attempt to get conservatives to care about climate change, because besotted lunatics on the Left think all conservatives care about is the military.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @02:21AM
In stunning reversal, military nukes the climate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:05AM
"Many things can bring down a military. But climate change? My eyes are rolling out of my head."
While I understand your scepticism, I think in this case you may want to put your eyes back in their sockets. I know a guy who is currently reservist in the Air Force. One of the things he has done in the past is work for a unit that writes reports on how to deal with, shall we say, rather outlandish scenarios; it seems the military likes to be prepared for all contingencies. For example, I seem to recall a report being written on how to deal with a zombie apocalypse. I'm sure they also wrote at least one report on what to do about an invasion by space aliens. One of the useful side effects is that they frequently do identify areas of our national infrastructure that need urgent attention so it isn't all for naught..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:13AM (1 child)
BZZZZT wrong answer. The military just wants more budget "for climate change or whatever".
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday October 28 2019, @02:20PM
BZZZZT wrong answer. The military contractors just wants more budget "for climate change or whatever".
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 28 2019, @07:42AM (4 children)
Uhh, you might give that a little more thought. Historically, dynasty change and the like have happened because of things related to climate change. The monsoons don't come for a year, things are still good. The monsoons don't come for five years, the peasants get restless. No monsoon and drought for ten years running? The dynasty falls. Hungry people don't care about justice, or reason, or even military might. They're dying anyway, so things need to change. The smartest just pick up and leave in search of a better life, and the rest start killing off whoever they think is responsible.
You have made some interesting posts about China in the past. Take a look at Chinese history, and note how their history correlates to climate and/or weather change. And, almost always, when a dynasty falls, their army falls with them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 28 2019, @11:18AM (2 children)
Does it correlate? How about government corruption and overpopulation? It's a lot easier to response to climate/weather change when you have a much smaller population and a competent government.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 28 2019, @12:23PM (1 child)
Yes, it does correlate. More, it seems that climate and weather pattern changes are actually causitive.
That assertion requires some serious research. China has a long history, after all. Some dynasties were more beneficient than others, but they all fall when they are not capable of providing for the people's overall survival and security. That is, when starvation and serious malnutrition reach some undefined level, the people are going to overthrow the government, no matter how competent.
Which, brings into question, how the hell does N. Korea continue to exist, if starvation runs rampant frequently? I suppose control of the news has a lot to do with that . . .
BTW, like most all the rest of the world, overpopulation has only been a problem in China for the past ~200 years. Only in smaller, localized areas has overpopulation been a serious problem prior to about 1800.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 29 2019, @03:02AM
My view is that fragile societies are more of a threat to our future than climate change will be. Here's a relevant example. In the past few months, someone (JoeMerchant maybe?) was claiming to me that regulation shouldn't be cut back in case of emergency because the bad actors would delay restoration of the regulations as long as possible (and then gave a Houston refineries after a hurricane example, which is what makes me think it was JoeMerchant). That sort of stubborn nuttery introduces a great deal of fragility into a society since it greatly reduces the ability of societies to respond to disaster.
In other words, he was willing to destroy the ability of his society's ability to respond to disaster because following rules he liked was more important than having a future.
To borrow from a similar saying, you can't control disasters very well. But you can control your response to disasters. Climate changes happen. Our ability to cope with those climate changes is far more important than whether the change happens.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 29 2019, @05:12AM
No, dynasty change happens because the ancient ginko trees at Dabei Temple lose branches. Everybody knows that, Runaway.
None of them correlated with climate changes, really. There was the time the Mongols invaded, which had nothing to do with weather. There was the time the Manchus invaded, which had nothing to do with weather. Another time, the country split into a Northern Kingdom, which gaves us "Beijing" ("North Capital") and a Southern Kingdom, which gave us "Nanjing" ("South Capital"). Then there were the Taipings, who were inspired by a strange amalgam of Christianity and native Chinese beliefs. Then there was the general erosion of rural prosperity due to the tradition of primogeniture whereby the first-born son inherited half his father's property and the other kids divvied up the other half, such that toward the end everybody was living on plots too small to grow the food necessary to support a family. But that's really a human problem, not a climate problem.
Sure, there are the floods on the Yellow River, "China's Sorrow," but that's been a recurrent feature of life in China for millennia and not really anything to change dynasties over. And given that the north and south of the country have different agricultural bases (the south cultivates rice, the north barley, millet, wheat, etc), there's never really been anything widely spread enough to cause collapse. It's just too big, diverse, and populous a country for that. It's like supposing that because there has been some flooding along the Mississippi, that everyone in America will starve.
Droughts and famine are no joke, but it's really a stretch to say "climate change will destroy America's military!!!"
Washington DC delenda est.