Climate denial is a foolish mistake

Climate denial is a foolish mistake. Denial allows us to ignore prospects of sea level rise, extreme weather, floods and coastal inundations, access and supply chain disruptions, hampered training and preparedness to meet conditions, denials that lead us into wars and conflicts to which we may be strategically unprepared to adapt.

"There is no such thing as climate change...In the name of defense, we are making war."

Beside the logic of either statement, official positions of the US government these days, what are the realities that lie behind these assertions?

For example, if you deny climate change, you can ignore any prospect of sea-level rise, extreme weather, floods, coastal inundations, access and supply chain disruptions, training and preparedness to meet conditions without consequence. If you absent climate from the actuality of sea state and predictable weather, if you dismantle or re-focus metrological capability to anticipate changing conditions and approaching severe events, you can abandon precaution, accept the conditions as they come, and deny the consequence even as it leaves you vulnerable or incapacitated.

No climate change - and we make war.

There is no such thing as climate, and yet we are making war. Thus, we can leave our ports, naval installations, airfields, and forces in the field without a warning, a contingency, an anticipated adaptation to forestall the outcome of our ships unable to sail, planes to fly, soldiers in the field unaware and unprepared for conditions to be facedin extremis, in harm’s way.

Thus, the ships are vulnerable to coastal forces, not the enemy.

Thus, they must be relocated to be safe albeit farther afield from engagement.

Thus, soldiers are not prepared for weather conditions that defeat the mission.

Thus, even all the weapons systems, human and technological, that allow us to “see” strategically are compromised and we are rendered blind.

If there is no climate change, we have no need to factor such hypotheticals into our plans for preparation, short-term or long. We have no need to look forward with battle plans designed for conditions heretofore non-existent. We can stand by, complacent, indifferent, to watch our piers destroyed, our ships trapped in port, our supplies of food, water, ammunition, and weaponry - on which we presume to rely to make successful war - cut short, left ashore, drowned, and useless.

What is a worst condition of war?

It is unpreparedness and ignorance. We spend billions on our National defense, on battleships and aircraft carriers and submarines, on weapons and new technologies claiming to make us the greatest military machine in history. But not so if the ships can’t weather the storms, not so if the planes can’t fly, not so if the soldiers and sailors are un-watered and un-fed.

We declare grand assumptions based on grand ideas, but we are not so grand when we deliberately ignore the lessons of science, the best efforts of military leaders’ planning, without a complete toolbox to meet the full spectrum of conditions that can so suddenly and dramatically change the field of battle.

How does one explain away real stupidity with ephemeral patriotism? How does one give solace to the victims lost to the unpreparedness of their leaders? How dare we think that we are responsible in this troubled, conflicted geo-political world if we irresponsibly deny the facts before us?

Climate denial is a foolish mistake. If we deny the facts, if we declare truth as false, if we assert that we can win against the conditions of Nature, then, in truth, we are practicing willful ignorance, debasing our skills, abandoning our values to failed, self-serving false rationale, sending our sons and daughters into a useless, dangerous endeavor, and committing crimes against them, then against the humanity worldwide that will follow. This is not who we are, but it is who we may be becoming.

This is the false climate we live in. The true climate is the ocean, changing all the time. The sea connects all things, and if we embrace that fact, accept responsibility, invent change, shift to offense, accept and plan wisely, peace will come.

Peter Neill is founder of the World Ocean Observatory, a web-based resource for science-based and educational information committed to the health and future of climate and ocean. Peter is host of World Ocean Radio, a weekly syndicated radio show and podcast upon which this blog is inspired.

The World Ocean Observatory is a Knowledge Partner of the WIKI Centennial Expedition/HelpSaveTheMed, a three-year multimedia and educational initiative which was launched on May 4, 2026 in Monaco.