New Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently dismissed climate change research with a rather crude term.

Robert Salesses, a deputy director in the Department of Defense, said the Pentagon will “cease unnecessary spending that set our military back under the previous administration, including through so-called ‘climate change’ and other woke programs.”

If Roger Revelle was alive today, he probably would like to have a few choice words with these guys.

At least 70 years ago, the renowned oceanographer and climate scientist so identified with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla was among those who determined global warming was occurring and would have sweeping impacts — on the world and humankind but also on military operations and facilities.

Concern and data about global warming have been around a lot longer than most people realize. The U.S. Navy and its affiliated scientists have been in the vanguard of this research.

Revelle, who died in 1991 at age 82, urged a congressional committee to fund climate research in 1956 — 1956! — and connected global warming to competition between the United States and the former Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War

“The Arctic Ocean will become navigable and . . . then the Russian Arctic coastline will be really quite free for shipping. . . . This would have the effect, if it does happen, of changing the character of the Russians opposed to ourselves,” Revelle told the House Appropriations Committee.

Revelle said the United States was “now the greatest maritime nation on the earth. . . . If the Russian coastline increases by something like 2,000 miles or so, the Russians will become a great maritime nation,” noted Neta C. Crawford, an American political scientist at the University of Oxford, who has written extensively on climate change and the military.

That was some foresight. Global warming already is melting Artic ice, making the region increasingly navigable. Widely accepted scientific projections suggest it will become more so in the future.

Russia — a longtime U.S. adversary, though that status seems to be changing under President Donald Trump — is planning operations in the Artic through the prism of climate change. For the U.S. to stop doing so would be a foolish strategic setback — not just in the Arctic Ocean but around the globe.

Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, former assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy, installations and environment, recently told CNN that climate programs are not just important to give the U.S. military an edge on rivals like China and Russia.

“Inaction at this point will put our readiness and the lives of our troops and their families at greater risk,” he said.

Making military installations more resilient to extreme weather could save the Pentagon billions in the years to come as wildfires and hurricanes become more intense. In 2019, the Air Force requested $5 billion to rebuild two major bases after hurricanes and flooding caused severe damage.

Chaudhary noted other U.S. military issues caused by changes in climate: Wildfires affecting launches at Space Force bases in the U.S.; melting permafrost in Alaska affecting runways; building artificial reefs around installations to protect bases from storm surges.

It is not yet clear how the Pentagon’s plans to scuttle climate-research contracts will affect ongoing military efforts to adapt to global warming.

In San Diego, the Navy has long worked with local governments to account for future effects from climate change. The San Diego Association of Governments, the regional planning agency, collaborated with Navy Region Southwest on “Military Installation Resilience.” That project includes, among other things, what transportation corridors might be affected by sea-level rise, such as state Routes 75 and 282 in Coronado, Imperial Beach and San Diego.

Further, climate research can assess how future conditions, like worsening drought, may contribute not only to migration but political upheaval that could affect military operations.

Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III told The Boston Globe in 2013 that political instability resulting from climate change “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

This isn’t to say climate research or any other program shouldn’t be reassessed and dropped if found ineffective. The Pentagon and federal government as a whole certainly waste a lot of money. But there has not been thorough analysis of what’s valuable research to the military and what isn’t by the new administration.

Revelle served in the Navy during World War II and after and was a key figure in the Office of Naval Research. He documented the effects of 1946 nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll on fish and waves.

He could be blunt-spoken and some believed he may have lacked diplomacy in fighting to create UC San Diego in La Jolla. That may have prevented him from becoming the first chancellor of the school, which opened in 1960. Nevertheless, the oldest residential college at UCSD was named Revelle College.

It would have been interesting to see how Revelle would have responded to Hegseth, who recently said on X, “The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.”

Revelle’s research, of course, was guided by science, not any kind of “woke” sensibility, as it is derisively used in today’s context.

The U.S. military, for all its study and planning regarding climate change, is in a peculiar place. It’s a leader in fossil fuel emissions that contribute to global warming — and in adapting to it. Revelle and his colleagues argued strongly for reducing emissions while preparing for the effects of climate change.

There’s broad agreement around the world today that both need to be done. But not everywhere. Trump has called climate change a hoax.

Revelle might have wanted a word with him as well.