Trump Has Made the Department of Defense into Climate Liars

Trump Has Made the Department of Defense into Climate Liars

In a DoD report on Climate-Related Risk to DoD Infrastructure, Initial Vulnerability Assessment Survey (SLVAS) Report, drafters have removed the 23 mentions of “climate change”. This is what the report is about in the first place.

The report covered a vast number of affected facilities, and not being able to accurately evaluate their future risk to climate change or sea level rise is going to cost us, the taxpayers, lots of future protection or replacement. Instants of sea level rise are also left out of the report, from the draft under President Obama. The survey of 3.500 sites found that 782 will be impacted by drought, 763 by wind, and 706 by flooding.

The report also removed threats to our North Shore, along with Canada, because of the well established continual decline in Arctic ice. The US has one icebreaker, while Russia has 45, along with a polar fleet.

Four articles before, I was musing about Trump making all 2.8 million federal employees into required liars. In this survey of ALL DOD facilities, Trump has made all members of DOD into distorters. In 2016, the US military had 1.28 million service members, and 0.80 million in the reserves. The DOD also has 0.74 million civilian personnel, making it the nation’s largest employer.

We rely on our military to be totally honest, especially with all of the power that they wield, which we bought and paid for for them. We know that the military is required not to obey illegal orders. We know that it is under command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which we trust implicitly. How on earth have they allowed themselves or Trump’s political appointees to lie about their crucial survey of threats to our military facilities.

In 2017, with a budget of $619 BILLION, the US military was 35% of the world’s total military expenditures of $1,739 billion. The next largest budgets are the People’s Republic of China at 13.0%, Saudi Arabia at 4.0%, Russia at 3.8%, India at 3.7%, France at 3.3%, the UK at 2.7%, Japan at 2.6%, Germany at 2.5%, and South Korea at 2.3%. It takes the sum of the next 8 countries to equal the US expenditures at 35.6%, leaving out South Korea from the above list.

Why on earth does our military, the strongest by far, and over the entire history of the world, have to sacrifice their honesty and integrity to the administration’s unholy partnership with the polluting fossil fuel industry? If there is somebody with the mission and power to stand up to the sellout of the administration, it is the military and the DOD.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
This entry was posted in Climate Change, Climate Science, Coastal Flooding, Coastal States, Department of Defense, Donald Trump, Houston Flooding, Infrastructure, Military Budget, Trump Administration. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply