MOD looks to identify potential climate change conflicts
The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has given the Met Office a £12 million contract to identify areas of the world where climate change could cause conflict and security threats. The research will focus on areas where rising temperatures could lead to food and water shortages, which could in turn lead to local or large scale conflicts and wars. The MoD's chief scientific adviser, Roy Anderson said: "The MoD has identified climate change as a key strategic factor affecting societal stresses and the responses of communities and nations to those stresses." This particular project is only one part of a wider scheme to determine the effects of climate change globally and nationally. Defra, the environment department, has pledged £74m to help scientists provide more detailed forecasts of how UK weather is likely to change over the coming decades.
The emphasis has very clearly shifted from trying to determine if global warming is real to what the effects of global warming will be.The next step for the government is to actually take action to reduce climate change emissions, but this seems an unlikely step. Looking at the whole raft of measures the government is putting in place, it would appear that they are resigned to global warming and are looking at ways to deal with the impact rather than try to stop it happening.
