Report: Climate change a threat
A government study says the effects are getting worse in U.S.
The federal government on Friday released a long-awaited report with an unmistakable message: The impacts of climate change, from deadly wildfires to increasingly debilitating hurricanes and heat waves, are battering the United States, and the danger of more such catastrophes is worsening.
The report’s authors, who represent numerous federal agencies, say they are more certain than ever that climate change poses a severe threat to Americans’ health and pocketbooks, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources. And while it avoids policy recommendations, the report’s sense of urgency and alarm stand in stark contrast to the lack of any apparent plan from President Donald Trump to tackle the problems which, according to the government he runs, are increasingly dire.
The congressionally mandated document — the first of its kind issued during the Trump administration — details how disasters fueled by a warming climate and other types of worrying changes are becoming more commonplace across the country and how much worse they could become in the absence of efforts to combat global warming.
Already, Western mountain ranges are retaining much less snow throughout the year, threat-
UNALASKA, ALASKA» Army helicopters began flying in and out of the scraggily wilderness near this fishing town in August, surprising even the mayor.
The tan, twin-rotor Chinook aircraft thumped over treeless cliffs and the historic port of Dutch Harbor, parking at a mountainside airstrip too small to land jet airliners.
Soldiers came and went, sometimes staying at the main hotel in town, across the street from a bar called the Norwegian Rat Saloon. Unalaska’s mayor, Frank Kelty, said he called the military to find out what was going on but learned little.
“We have these Army helicopters here, and we don’t know what they’re doing or where they’re going,” he said after driving by the airport on the remote Aleutian island and seeing a Chinook resting near the runway.
The mysterious operation was part of the U.S. military’s gradual growth in the Arctic as it grapples with the effects of melting polar ice and Russia’s and China’s increasing assertiveness in the region. The slowly evolving plan has included stationing more fighter jets in Alaska, expanding partnerships with Nordic militaries, increasing cold-weather training and designing a new class of icebreaker ship for the Coast Guard that could be armed.
The vision could take greater shape by the end of the year: Both the Navy and Coast Guard are working on new Arctic strategies in light of the quickly changing circumstances senior U.S. military officials see.
In October, the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier and its associated ships sailed above the Arctic Circle, the first such unit to do so since the Cold War. The strike group, carrying thousands of sailors, practiced cold-weather operations in the Norwegian Sea, an area where Russian submarines operate.
“Certainly America has got to up its game in the Arctic. There’s no doubt about that,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said during a visit to Alaska in June. “The reality is that we’re going to have to deal with the developing Arctic, and it is developing.”
Recent upgrades include new sensors on several Aleutian islands for a radar network known as the North Warning System. It was first installed during the Cold War to watch for incoming aircraft and ballistic missiles, but the Pentagon concluded more recently that existing radar did not offer “adequate detection and identification of aircraft operating outside the continental United States,” according to an Air Force assessment.
That prompted the operation involving the helicopters in Unalaska.
A military spokeswoman, Leah Garton, said the mission allowed the aircrews to practice navigating over water and landing in mountainous areas, where the sensors were installed. The new equipment will “assist in flight safety for all civilian and military aircraft in the local area,” she said.
The new Navy and Coast Guard Arctic strategies would follow the national defense strategy released by Mattis in January that made countering Russia and China a priority. Both nations have shown interest in Arctic resources as the ice melts, including fossil fuels, diamonds, and metals such as nickel and platinum.