The UK’s mil­i­tary chief of staff is con­cerned:

Cli­mate change pos­es a chal­lenge for the mil­i­tary in adapt­ing oper­a­tions and help­ing to deal with the con­se­quences of migra­tion and increased ten­sions as peo­ple com­pete for resources, the head of the U.K. armed forces said.

Ris­ing tem­per­a­tures and changes in rain­fall pat­terns are like­ly to increase deser­ti­fi­ca­tion, putting pres­sure on food and water sup­plies in parts of the world such as Dar­fur in Sudan and oth­er parts of Africa, Air Chief Mar­shal Jock Stir­rup, chief of defense staff, told del­e­gates yes­ter­day at a two-day con­fer­ence at Chatham House, a Lon­don-based pol­i­cy institute.

This fol­lows sim­i­lar expres­sions of con­cern by the US intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ty. Con­gress recent­ly request­ed an esti­mate of the secu­ri­ty risks result­ing from glob­al warm­ing, a request backed by the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence. In Jan­u­ary, Sen­a­tor McCain point­ed out “the secu­ri­ty threat posed by pop­u­la­tions whose health, liveli­hood, and vari­abil­i­ty are poten­tial­ly threat­ened by glob­al ris­ing tem­per­a­tures and altered envi­ron­ments,” and observed that if glob­al warm­ing is left unchecked “we could face envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic, and nation­al secu­ri­ty con­se­quences far beyond our abil­i­ty to imagine.”

UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ban Ki-Moon recent­ly argued that the vio­lence in Dar­fur is at least part­ly dri­ven by cli­mate change, an argu­ment made at more length in the Atlantic Month­ly.

Mean­while, oth­er con­ser­v­a­tives are proud that a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans are mis­in­formed on the mat­ter. Ned Ryun – the Con­gress­man­’s son, a for­mer White House staffer and now an lob­by­ist for home-school­ing – thanks God for the pub­lic’s igno­rance about this emerg­ing threat to our nation­al secu­ri­ty.