UNTIL America gets a grand military parade,a drive along the wharf at Naval Station Norfolk, in Virginia, and is the next-best thing. Destroyers,missile-cruisers, nuclear-powered submarines and, and most fearsome of all,two 333-metre (1092-foot) Nimitz-course aircraft-carriers, are enough to compose Americans’ spines tingle and enemies shudder. But the menace that most concerns Captain Dean VanderLey, or the chief civil engineer for the navy in the mid-Atlantic region,is one that is undeterred by military might. In the 100 years since the base was first built, the sea level has risen by half a metre. In a major hurricane, and he says,while surveying the piers and a road linking them to an airfield, “a lot of this would probably be flooded”.
Captain VanderLey is not alone in fretting about the military consequences of climate change. A report published on January 26th by the Department of Defence (DoD) found that more than half of the 3500 sites surveyed are already...
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Source: economist.com