Man-made global warming is already making hurricanes “bigger, larger, more violent,” the chief of the National Guard Bureau told reporters Tuesday.
“I do think that storms are becoming bigger, larger, more violent,” Lengyel said, according to the Washington Post. “You know, I never know if this one speck of time is an anomaly or not, but, you know, we’ve all seen now three Category-5 storms that popped out in a period of a month.”
While Lengyel is technically wrong — the U.S. only experienced two Category 5 storms this year — he expressed the worry of scientists and activists that see global warming as a growing threat. The Pentagon even called warming a “threat multiplier” in a 2014 report.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Congress earlier this year that “climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.” His statements have been the boilerplate military talking point for years.
Top Navy officials even begged the Trump administration to keep in place green energy programs, which many saw as being threatened after President Barack Obama left office.
The Obama administration made a concerted effort to put global warming as a centerpiece of its foreign policy, including national defense. Obama appointed Lengyel to head the National Guard in 2016. Lengyel said the National Guard may need more vehicles and equipment to prepare for global warming, but the military’s first priority is equipment that can also be used in combat.
“I look at equipment that works for both the war-fight piece and the homeland piece,” Lengyel said. “It’s rare that we have a domestic-only capability.”
While hurricanes are devastating to coastal states, there’s no strong evidence that storms are becoming more frequent or intense.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says it’s “premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming – have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.”
NOAA says future warming is likely to increase the severity of storms by 2 to 11 percent, but the frequency of storms isn’t expected to change much.
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