The DoD Net Zero Climate Change Program Must Be Suspended

In 1988 the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activity.  Relying on the IPCC’s Assessment Reports, the 2016 Paris Climate Accords established the goal of achieving by 2050 a balance between CO2 emissions and sequestration, referred to as NetZero.

The Department of Defense’s Climate Adaptation Plan accepts the IPCC's Assessment Reports as its foundation for recommending mitigation programs without question or critical analysis. Committing hundreds of billions of dollars to climate change programs that are generated by a politically motivated international committee is negligent, damaging to national security, and puts the lives of members of the armed forces in needless jeopardy by resorting to unproven and unreliable technologies.

The charter, findings, and recommendations of IPCC’s Assessment Reports must be challenged.  The founding charter requires that the IPCC accentuates “man-made” causes of climate change and minimizes natural causes which are routinely dismissed or simply ignored.  While much of the technical analysis is valid, the definitive recommendations found in the “Summary for Policy Makers” are generated, not by scientists, but by political appointees who modify technical findings to align with the preferred narrative.

The central findings in the supporting volumes are based on unvalidated and flawed computer models which cannot generate accurate short-term forecasts using known input data and results.  These computer models are not solely science-based but are highly parameterized constructs where modelers constantly adjust the inputs to generate the desired outputs. 

Implementing none of the IPCC’s Net Zero recommendations, and allowing atmospheric CO2 to double, is one of IPCC’s worst case climate scenarios.  The foundational laws of thermodynamics and electromagnetism that govern the manner in which CO2 absorbs and releases energy were derived by the legends of physics—Planck, Schwarzschild, Stefan, and Boltzmann. Using their equations, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from present levels causes a < 0.7°C rise in global temperatures—an observation that aligns with satellite measurements not used by the IPCC.

In order for IPCC models to predict catastrophic increases of global temperature of >3°C, climate modelers adjust these computations upwards by at least a factor of 4.  This arbitrary manipulation is rationalized by employing non observable positive feedback loops.  On the contrary, thermodynamic and atmospheric observations demonstrate that natural systems are governed by negative, not positive, feedback loops, which are protective and prevent uncontrolled escalations of temperature.

DoD policy is fixated on a goal that will imperceptibly affect the world’s climate—reducing fossil fuel emissions and achieving a NetZero by 2050. Currently, the DoD produces only 1% of the United States’ CO2 emissions, which in turn is responsible for 13% of the world’s total. Even if the DoD achieves Net-Zero, eliminating 0.13% of the world’s CO2 output would not detectably reduce global temperatures. 

The DoD must immediately suspend all climate adaptation programs, then on a program-by-program basis, provide an independent report on the scientific basis justifying the proposed mitigation effort.

Scott Sturman, MD, a former Air Force helicopter pilot, is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy Class of 1972, where he majored in aeronautical engineering. A member of Alpha Omega Alpha, he graduated from the University of Arizona School of Health Sciences Center and practiced medicine for 35 years until retirement. He now lives in Reno, Nevada.

Doug Goodman graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1972 and majored in physics and atmospheric physics. His professional life began as a weather officer in the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program and later evolved into a career in the aerospace industry developing remote sensing and high performance supercomputing systems.