US Navy sinking skeptics?

Posted on August 17, 2010 in Attended

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus spoke at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco this evening. He seemed to be avoiding controversial statements, but described how the Navy is planning to patrol an Arctic Ocean that is projected to be ice-free in about 25 years and is moving to cut fossil fuel use in half by 2020.

It occurs to me that it’s hard to see how an American, at least, can maintain a skeptic’s position in the face of these plans. Mablus, a former governor, stated these plans as unexceptional. They’re reviewed, and must be approved, by congressmen and senators of both parties. If any of them believe that climate change is not real, they are seriously derelict in approving Navy budgets of many tens of billions of dollar that are based on such considerations – and in not making these actions by the Navy a campaign issue.

The alternative explanation is that all these representatives believe what the Pentagon is telling them about climate change impacts, and their public skepticism or denial of it is simply pandering to voter segments whom they actually believe to be ignorant, and aggressively so. (Which is why the pandering is necessary.)

For myself, I find the realism (in supporting the budgets) reassuring, but the lack of public courage dismaying.

I also note that former skeptics in the UK are starting to come around. I’m hopeful that the same will begin to happen in the US in the next few years as well.

If you’re a skeptic, how do you square the rest of your political positions with the Navy’s planning? If not, try this on your skeptic friends; I’d love to hear any coherent responses.

(Full disclosure: I see the world as made up of a small number of my allies who correctly understand the situation now, and a large number of future allies who will understand it in time, and will then do all they can to help. To me, the only really evil action here is actively undermining the advancement and dissemination of scientific work in this area – a level to which, as with the tobacco wars, many who have economic interests in fossil fuel use etc. have already stooped.)