 I'm delighted to be here today on this topic, and I'm particularly happy to welcome Radmell Jonathan White. He – we're going to change gears a little bit. Radmell White has many talents. He's a man of many – talents, a man of many titles, more to the point. He's the navigator of the Navy, he's the oceanographer of the Navy, but the title that we're particularly going to lean on today is the Director of Task Force Climate Change. And the Navy decided in 2009 to create Task Force Climate Change. This wasn't about joining a political debate. It wasn't about the ethics or the morality of poverty versus climate change. And it wasn't about green and who's green and who's not. It was about the world the Navy operates in, the operating environment and the mission of the Navy and how this was affecting it. So what we're going to talk about today with Radmell White, who's the Director of this Task Force, is – and by the way also he's – he's – he's – he owns the Master Clock and takes care of GPS for the Navy. So if you – if anybody knows where they are or when they are, it's because of this man. So what we're going to talk about is why the Navy is looking at this issue and how they're looking at it. But let's start with the very first principles kind of question, which is why the Navy? Why would the Navy be concerned about this? And there's of course other – other entities in the Department of Defense. Why has the Navy been so forward-leaning on climate change? So let me first just also offer a correction and I don't have that many talents. I have a lot of talented people that surround me, so I'm hoping I can channel them while I'm on the stage and their expertise. But no, thanks. So it sort of makes sense for the Navy to do this. When you think about the historical role of the U.S. Navy and even navies that came before us that we model ourselves afterward, the British Navy for example, you know, someone who changed science as we know it was a guy named Charles Darwin. He went to sea on a Royal Navy ship, the HMS Beagle. I think Navy – the U.S. Navy especially – has always looked to the future with an exploratory sense and really trying to understand what are the new frontiers. And when we look to the future, we understand our planet is changing. The cryosphere is shrinking, the ice is going away, the sea level is rising, weather patterns are changing. And we're growing for us to a large degree a new ocean up around the North Pole. So if you look at this change, we understand that we need to embrace it and navigate as you put our way ahead. And navigation requires making a decision. Where am I going to go? And so we understand that now is the time, as has been talked to that, to make some decisions and take some action. And then the big part, why is the Navy in the lead? Well, heck, you know, look at the panels that are here today and what have you talked about? Sea level rise. Hmm, Navy ports. We have a lot of sea level – a lot of ports around the coastlines. I mentioned the Arctic Ocean perspective. There are a lot of Navy-specific interest in what's happening to our planet. It's a natural for the Navy. And this was, you know, the chief of naval operations initiative. So let's talk a little bit more specifically about that. You mentioned the cryosphere, which is, for anybody who doesn't know, is the world's ice. But there's a specific place that you mentioned, which is the Arctic. Let's talk a little bit about what the Navy is seeing there, not what's being modeled or speculated about. But over the last decades, what the actual change that the Navy has seen through its imagery and other kinds of measurements that you take. Yeah. So, I mean, if you look and, you know, you can – everybody's seen the reports from the National Snow and Ice Data Center on, you know, the amount of the ice minimum is shrinking. We follow those. We understand that is fact that is based on satellite observations. The models that show the volume of ice shrinking are also based largely on fact. It's the area along with ice cores and you get a volume. And then the other thing that we've observed is we have – we've been sending submarines north in the Arctic for decades now. The reports back from the submarine tell us it's a lot different now. Our captains who are going into the Arctic on submarines when they went to see as a lieutenant 20 years ago, you know, it was a lot different north of the Bering Strait this time of year before. You know, the ice is thinner. It's much more dynamic and things like that. So, we see change occurring. We see, of course, the longer ice-free seasons where we always had multi-year thick pack ice. Now it's seasonal one-year ice or sometimes very short periods of ice. So, we are seeing that. And then based on that, we're trying to – we are projecting a future that's going to be much more open for periods of the year. Also, an Arctic that's going to be much more dynamic in terms of what happens with the ice as well and knowing that we likely will have to be able to operate up there. So, and you have – I know you have an Arctic road map that's helping to chart for the Navy where you need to go. What are some of the equipping challenges, you know? So, again, let's just talk brass tacks. When the Navy is looking at – we're going to be operating up there and it's going to be an entirely new ocean. We will not be the only country up there. We are not the only country up there. What does the Navy actually – what are you worried about? Where do you see the potential investments? Well, first is if you are going to go anywhere on any ocean, I want to be able to do it safely. So, regardless of whether – what type of ship I may operate up there, the Navy, as I mentioned, we operate submarines up there today. We understand how to do that. I don't see that changing a lot. It's really our surface ships, our aircraft and our people and maybe infrastructure. These are the things that we start to look for. In order to do all that, you want to be able – you've got to be able to actually operate safely. And every ship captain in the Navy will tell me, as an oceanographer and meteorologist, if I'm going to take my ship up there, John, you better be able to tell me what the weather, the ice, the ocean is doing. And also, your charts, your nautical charts for navigation, better be accurate. And so, these are challenges. We don't have a lot of those things up in the Arctic today. And so, that's the first thing we've got to do is – and we are actually investing a lot of money, several million dollars a year in the Navy, to do research to understand the environment, be able to forecast the environmental conditions. And then we've got to work. And you mentioned other nations up there. These aren't just our challenges. We've got the Arctic Council, of which everyone knows we're going to be in the chairmanship role here in a couple of months. And as we take on that, I think the opportunity of the nations to work together to answer these common problems. If I'm going to do search and rescue, which we've agreed to do, how do I partner to do a better job of predicting where the hazardous areas are, what the ice is doing, what the weather is doing. And then also, can we start to chart the ocean in some areas that used to be always ice covered? Can we share data to produce some areas safe for navigation? So those are the key enablers. But then I'm also looking at what ships I'm going to build in the future. I've got to make some hard decisions. Just like we talked about hard decisions in relation to sea level rise, you know, when am I going to invest in things and doing things differently? Or how I build my structure? So I'm going to invest in maybe ships that are more ice capable than they are today. So there are some hard investment decisions that we're going to have to make in the not too distant future to have a Navy that's by the mid-20s to 2030 is already capable. So that's when you see that there'll be a mission for the Navy. The Coast Guard right now is, as far as you've seen an increase in civilian traffic through the area, particularly for I would imagine oil and gas related, but also just ships through the area. That's a certain rescue challenge. But so far, as far as a naval mission, you're looking at 2030 or so. We have missions in every ocean on the world today. You want your Navy to be able to go on every ocean. We don't anticipate any kind of conflict in the Arctic. People talk about a race there. Do you think that's realistic? I don't see it as a race. We don't want to have an ocean that we say I can't go there. So if I'm going to be able to go there, we're sort of looking at 2025 to 2030 that time frame where you're going to see for at least a few weeks a year on some years more than other some open transit passages near polar routes, deep water passage routes during the summertime only of course. We're going to see that traffic that you talked about. We're seeing a linear increase in going across. You can look in the Barents Sea, they say it's greater than linear increase in cruise ships and fishing and things like that. But it's not an exponential increase yet. So if you sort of chart that out, you start to say, yeah, mid-20s time frame is a good target to say, okay, I need to have a minimally capable Navy we're minimally capable today. I need to have a more capable Navy by the mid-20s and by 2030 I ought to have a Navy that can do pretty well. And that's a reasonable planning horizon for the Navy where you're making those plans and investments now. And again, we rely a lot on the expertise of a lot of folks that are in this room and beyond, from NOAA to a lot of the universities, a lot of the people who really try to project long-term what the ice is doing and we've put those together to come up with that estimate that you can find in our road map. So as far as that being a mission Navy, core Navy missions that are being affected by climate change and one of those is humanitarian and disaster relief. I saw a number the other day that Pacific Command which is based out in Hawaii is estimates that they're doing at least one humanitarian mission every eight weeks. And so they're seeing an increase in the tempo of that kind of operation. And when you and I talked about this earlier one of the things you said that really struck me is yes, this is a mission that the Navy has been doing for a long time. It's in the Navy's strategy definitionally a core mission of the Navy and it's increasing. But the real challenge is not so much the relief but prevention and resilience. And I thought that was a fascinating point. Yeah, and I think that's like I try to say we had this term in DOD when we planned humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, HADR is the term that we used for those missions. I think when can we start to use HADP, humanitarian assistance and disaster prevention. And this comes in a couple of ways. First of all, where are the most vulnerable areas to catastrophic weather events? Now earthquakes and tsunamis we're a long way away from being able to reject some of those issues. We can understand where the vulnerable areas are but we can do a much better job based on sea level rise based on the seasonal annual maybe even the decadal weather patterns can we understand where some of the vulnerable areas around the world might be and what's going on with the population, the coastal populations and as we see areas that we know are extremely vulnerable to typhoons to flooding from monsoon, rain or flood, glaciers melting and those kind of things can we get in there and help what was talked about to sort of partner and make some of our partner nations less vulnerable to some of these climate change related events. Can we go in there like we've done for a long time you know we send a lot, we send doctors we send people to work with we do outrage engagement with State Department is there a way to maybe do a little bit more in terms of those that are willing and those that we have access to can we partner with them to maybe do a little bit more prevention so when the catastrophic things happen the relief is not quite not quite as severe. And the Navy has already started incorporating that into the way it does business. And of course it's not just about partner nations and a strategic engagement or even an operational one so meaning that the Navy has to do these operations it's also a self-interested one because the disasters sometimes are in our own countries in our own bases so we were talking about you mentioned coastal infrastructure so part of the mission for Task Force climate change is looking at the Navy's own infrastructure and how to prepare that now is that a real concern you mentioned Norfolk the other day is it a real concern for Norfolk is this something you're actually seeing already as a challenge it most certainly is you know and we sort of have this mixed blessing in the Navy it wasn't even mixed when I came into the Navy we have the best bases in the entire country if not world you know places like San Diego Norfolk Virginia Annapolis Coastal Honolulu we used to have a base in Bermuda but unfortunately shut that down but one thing they have in common there they're all right next to the ocean so this thing called as we understood the climate change in the 80's 90's and now we're faced with what we have we understand especially on the east coast of the US where you have sea level rise see it happening where you have another thing that's happening is thanks to our plate tectonics the continental plate that we reside on is subsiding in the eastern coastline so about the same rate that sea level is rising for the Hampton Roads area it is actually subsiding so it's millimeters per year but that adds up over time so if you go look at the number of flooding events in the Norfolk Virginia area over the last few decades you can see and you can go on you can talk to people who've lived there and say yeah it wasn't like this in the 50's you know so you know so as we see that we say okay we've got a navy base there and if you look at an aerial picture of the naval base Norfolk the largest navy base in the country if not world it looks like an island it's like you know you got a little isthmus that connects it so it's almost like a peninsula it's surrounded by water and we see more and more flooding events well if we're going to keep that navy base with all the infrastructure with the power of the water it's like that and keep it viable yeah we can raise the piers we can do our own navy stuff but there's this other thing our sailors tend to live out in town they tend to send their kids to schools out in town we don't make our all of our own power we don't plug our nuclear submarines into the grid not usually anyway we don't have solar cells yet on base to solve all of our power problems so we rely on the infrastructure of our local and that's why you take a look at Norfolk it's an example and it's been it's been called out as a pilot project by the White House and national security staff and they're asking for DOD to take a lead in this one because we recognize that we're trying to help bring the local community and also the state the local governments and it's a bipartisan effort right now to figure out a long term plan for how to deal with sea level rise in the Hampton Roads area and so we're very excited about that and maybe using that as an example we're concerned about our own infrastructure somewhat of a long-winded answer but yes we're very concerned and we have to do something it's you know and you can argue about okay why and what's causing it yes in the Navy you know I believe that there is something we need to take measures in mitigation we are doing that as a byproduct of some of our efforts to get away from fossil fuels also to increase our security posture there as well but you know we've got to understand it is happening and how we're going to adapt in those important coastal areas the public-private element of that is really interesting I think there's a long tradition of that in the military that you integrate with the community around you in ways that are consequential and in this case as far as solving the problem or mitigating the problem you're working with you said Old Dominion you mentioned the other day to me you know Representative Forbes who I've had personal experience with it's not about politics it's about the fact you showed me a graph where the incidence of flooding in Norfolk is on a straight you know trend up and it's also the frequency the severity all of it that's inescapable it's not a debating point it's happening for us in the Navy it's a matter of fact and how do you deal with it and that's what we've got to do based on you know based on what we know and what we see just like we deal with other hazards in the Navy and so this is now it's an opportunity to do something about it so we're trying to at that point where we have an opportunity before it gets to be a crisis or before we're responding to more crisis how can we there are great opportunities to figure out solutions to this and so that's what we're trying to do in Norfolk and we'll take a look at other places that are also vulnerable like inapolis and others and we're going to have to use similar types of efforts there I believe in the coming years and some of this it's not necessarily a huge amount of spending right it's not building codes it is and it's building codes and it's also understanding priorities and sometimes it's a matter of you know I know I've got to replace this roadway it was budgeted three years ago to replace this roadway in a city's budget oh yeah it connects to the interstate over there you know that's somebody else's problem but you know and they're going to replace it the next year well in your budget to replace this road did you think about raising it maybe a meter well yeah we thought about that and just didn't have the money and by the way well if I raise this road what about the interstate that's federally state funded are they doing the same thing you know you got to get everybody together I think we're still at a point we're sort of we've been playing a little kid soccer for a long time everybody's got their own little sometimes their own soccer ball and they're sort of winning all over the place and we're starting to graduate a little bit toward middle school maybe approach and you know we're starting to play more of the team everybody together let's focus on how to how to improve it and I think yeah you're right if you do it now it's you know it's actually less expensive the longer that you wait the more expensive it becomes because in the harder type of decisions and you're having to deal with you're much closer to if not responding to a crisis and that's not just in terms of building codes but where you're putting neighborhoods where you're building and at some point we may have to address issues in a lot of areas but on our coastlines I think we're going to have to personal opinion where do we displace neighborhoods to making the hard decisions that's opportunities for you know we've got to get the lawyers involved now maybe even the psychotherapists involved now but of making those kind of decisions up front and planning for that you know how do you do it in a way where somebody doesn't feel like you know I used to have this beautiful home that's right on the Chesapeake and you know now you're telling me I've got to leave but that is sort of a team approach instead of you know basically coming in and saying that's my land and yours is now over there we don't want to do that so it's challenges, challenges and opportunities I think one of the things that really struck me about the Navy's efforts and Task Force climate change was that you know it's about managing your own infrastructure it's about managing your partnerships it's about managing the change that's actually happening in places like the Arctic in my experience from the Department of Defense is that you're also looking at your planning and strategy for the future so again how the Defense Department works is that there's thinking going on all the time that is you know a year in the future five years in the future 10 years sometimes 40 years because it takes a long time to build capacity in this system and that the Navy really was forward-leaning about bringing these considerations into that planning cycle and thinking about what's the future world going to look like and what kind of Navy do we need is that a fair observation that that's been part of your efforts? Absolutely the best example I can tell you that is that every couple of years we have what we call the international sea power symposium where our chief naval operations Admiral Greener invites his counterparts from around the world we had back in October three chiefs of Navy from around the world, nations like Nigeria and many others they sent their head naval officer to come to Newport Rhode Island and have conversations about many issues, navigation, working together and communicating all these things we spent over half a day on climate change and I'll tell you hearing from the international Navy community, naval community on climate change was amazing and I think it's not just the US Navy because of their coastal maritime focus are seeing this so I think it really has been and yes as we look at the future just like we looked at the future of a nuclear Navy the future of a carrier Navy in the past we've got to look at the future of a Navy that is addressing climate change and like I said growing in the ocean so certainly it's part of our strategic planning I think we have time for just a couple questions so if you would say please identify yourself and do try to ask a question and I'm a very rude person so don't be sad if I cut you off she is not going to test it out back when she worked in the Pentagon I was very rude all the time thanks I'm Sarah from State University I have a very focused concrete question about how we use the Navy's highly pragmatic very depoliticized approach to this as a model for broader action across society you guys have to attend to your own business but those of us on the outside who are trying to get past the political mess would love to think of DoD as a kind of exemplar for how to take this pragmatic approach do you have very concrete suggestions for how those of us on the outside can actually collaborate is it possible with the Navy in getting this message and model out to the world and I would encourage you to start conversations with the Navy with the other services I will tell you that just like all the other parts of our society there are naval officers who think that John White's been smoking something he's not supposed to be smoking with this climate change thing but the more and more time goes on we're much more pragmatic we depoliticize everything as you know the other in my mind the big part of the U.S. infrastructure all of the academic institutions largely get away from the politics we tried well you do research research that is done the partnering that happens between some of the universities and some of our defense and laboratories what are those opportunities like Old Dominion you said like Old Dominion I talked about and with UC San Diego Scripps institution I was at Ohio State University I didn't root for them to win the football game by the way but this is back earlier in the year as they're looking at they've been a polar center for a long time so I think building those partnerships between not just DOD but other agencies as well but yes I think we do bring something the folks in uniform largely are seen as a political so I think at least on the Navy there are several folks who would be happy to have that conversation with the academic institutions and others about how can we come to some common ground and how can we solve some of these polar issues that we have and I think the key there is it's common ground it's the Navy solving its own problems and the nation's problems in doing this so if you want them to come and join the political debate on campus about is climate change happening or not they're not really the right institution but if you want to partner with them on research with Ohio State or even if there's a base in your community again there's a high degree of engagement and the Norfolk Project's a perfect example where it involves every element of civil society in that region and the Navy's at the heart of it so I think it's a great model too that it's oriented at what's the problem you're solving for and in this case it's the Navy's operations and it needs to be able to operate globally and to respond to certain kinds of missions and I think that's a good model for everybody to take away too which is what problem we're solving for and how do you get there it's also, don't forget there's a leadership opportunity a leadership challenge here we were gifted with the chief naval operations Elma Gary Ruffhead followed by Admiral John Greenert who understand this we have a secretary of defense Hegel who's also talked very strongly about our defense planning for climate change we have a four star Admiral Sam Locklear the head of the U.S. Pacific Command out in Hawaii she mentioned has been there for about three years now the number one strategic long-term priority and problem that he's looking at the entire Pacific and Indian Ocean realm so senior leadership and advocacy is very important and I think we're happy to take those conversations to other realms so and reach out as necessary to do the things she talked about okay just one more so if someone has a great question okay we nominate you hope it's not any harder from the University of Toronto you spoke at length and very well on the Arctic clearly the Navy has other challenges about expensive infrastructure on long coast a mission about search and rescue naval operations in storms disaster relief and recovery could you comment a bit on what priority that's given vis-a-vis the Arctic and indeed if you have any ideas of rough span in the period you're talking about investment priorities investment priorities but also isn't the mission because the shipwrecks will be worse the disasters will be more frequent etc so that's one of the big challenges that we have now our priorities and mission we're all the Navy's priority is war fighting and national defense and that is what we have to focus on so as we face threats especially in the maritime operations we have to focus and that's always going to be our near-term priority but as we look at other things that we can do in the future things that are smart as I talked about if we're building new buildings building new ships making the right decision so in order I would have to say that right now related to the climate change things the Arctic being as it's a new ocean and it's a new theater it's probably our top priority right under it is what we're doing about our coastal infrastructure and partner with others because of the sea level rise I think those are sort of one and two amongst all the other national and international agencies and efforts get after some of the problems that the previous panel talked about in terms of addressing whether it's energy or adaptation especially how can we help make our world more climate ready as well as weather ready in the future so it's almost not just how much do you spend on this but everything you're spending how do you spend it and do you take it into account that's a great way to put it folks like yourself and OSD have put that in the past don't spend foolishly when you're going to spend just in case y'all wonder it's really common for someone from a military service to compliment a civilian from the office of the secretary of defense so remember that you heard it I want to thank Redman White and in case also you don't realize he mentioned that the Navy has great leadership you don't get to two stars easily and for nothing so this gentleman is one of the great leaders of the Navy we're lucky to have him here today thank you very much for joining us