It's Mother's Day and I thought I'd giver a shout out to Mother Earth. Recent data from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration shows that we have now reached the milestone of 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and I'm wondering if people are finally going to start to wake up.
Thankfully, the Department of Defense has been alert for awhile. Here are a few tidbits of what we have to look forward to regarding climate change.
• First, climate change will shape the operating environment, roles, and missions that the
Department undertakes. It may have significant geopolitical impacts around the world,
contributing to greater competition for more limited and critical life-sustaining resources like
food and water. While the effects of climate change alone do not cause conflict, they may act as
accelerants of instability or conflict in parts of the world. Climate change may also lead to
increased demands for defense support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster
response, both within the United States and overseas.
• Second, DoD will need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on its facilities, infrastructure,
training and testing activities, and military capabilities. DoD’s operational readiness hinges on
continued access to land, air, and sea training and test space, all of which are subject to the effects
of climate change.
Grim, indeed and we can already see it happening. Yet the good news is that we can affect change and reverse our course by simply changing the grazing habits of cattle.
When all is said and done, the end result is what counts. Environmentalist Bill McKibben observes, "Done right, some studies suggest, this method of raising cattle could put much of the atmosphere's oversupply of greenhouse gases back in the soil inside half a century. That means shifting from feedlot farming to rotational grazing is one of the few changes we could make that's on the same scale as the problem of global warming."
Not only could we stop loading up the atmosphere with CO2 but we could actually put it back in the soil within 50 years. Here is the full TED talk by Dr. Savory
The new milestone of 400ppm in our atmosphere should be the red line in the sand. If we implement these changes along with a gradual shift to renewable energy, the future detailed by the DoD will not come to pass. It's time to start taking care of Mother Earth.
3 comments:
McKibben an "environmentalist"? Yeah I suppose that makes sense given that he has no scientific background.
And "Mother Earth"? You sure do like those sophisticated and nuanced views, don't you M?
Temperature change in perspective
The pattern repeats itself[6], there have been 5 interglacial events in the last 500,000 years.At ~10,500 years our current cooler but benign Holocene interglacial is coming towards its end and the reversion of our planet to a real ice age is foreseeable.
Please give me some greenhouse gas - it's our only hope. As a way smart guys says, "it's pretty obvious to anyone with even an 11 year old's casual interest that the climate is massively variable. The current "we've eliminated all possible causes other than Carbon Dioxide" is pretty unconvincing when you put it next to these charts."
Mother Earth and Daddy Government, what else would you expect from a child-like personality, juris?
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