NEWS: Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war.

The reasons for Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and President George W. Bush's skepticism about global warning become clear. According to a Pentagon report, sudden climate change may lead to "global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat than terrorism."

Yahoo News (AFP) story

The report was ordered by an influential US Pentagon advisor but was covered up by "US defense chiefs" for four months, until it was "obtained" by the British weekly The Observer.

The Pentagon report, commissioned by Andrew Marshall, predicts that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies," The Observer reported.

The report, quoted in the paper, concluded: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.... Once again, warfare would define human life."

Its authors -- Peter Schwartz, a CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of Global Business Network based in California -- said climate change should be considered "immediately" as a top political and military issue.

It "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern", they were quoted as saying.

Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:

-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.

-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California

-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.

-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.

Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.

"We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years," he told the paper.

Experts familiar with the report told the newspaper that the threat to global stability "vastly eclipses that of terrorism".

Taking environmental pollution and climate change into account in political and military strategy is a new, complicated and necessary challenge for leaders, Randall said.

"It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat," he said.

Coming from the Pentagon, normally a bastion of conservative politics, the report is expected to bring environmental issues to the fore in the US presidential race.

Last week the Union of Concerned Scientists, an influential and non-partisan group that includes 20 Nobel laureates, accused the Bush administration of having deliberately distorted scientific fact to serve its policy agenda and having "misled the public".

Its 38-page report, which it said took over a year to prepare and was not time to coincide with the campaign season, details how Washington "systematically" skewed government scientific studies, suppressed others, stacked panels with political and unqualified appointees and often refused to seek independent expertise on issues.

Critics of the report quoted by the New York Times denied there was deliberate misrepresentation and called it politically motivated.

The person behind the leaked Pentagon report, Andrew Marsall, cannot be accused of the same partisan politicking.

Marsall, 82, has been an advisor for the defense department for decades, and was described by The Observer as the author of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plans for a major transformation of the US military.

Related news stories
GreenPeace.org
Dai lyRecord
TheExperiment.org

Related ATS discussions
Global warming is REAL


[Edited on 23-2-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

Both the Guardian and the Observer stories which all others seem to be based on made for good headlines - but that is all.
The story on climate change was run in Fortune magazine more than a month ago, I would like to highlight a few excerpts;

"The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping strategies".

www.fortune.com...

Peter Schwartz's comment on BBC;

PETER SCHWARTZ:
Report Author
This is very much in the spirit of thinking the unthinkable. The report that we put together for the Pentagon is an extreme scenario, in the sense that most climatologists would say that this is low probability, in the sense of it happening soon, and as pervasively. But it is the Pentagon's job to think about many cases, the worst-case scenario. What are the extreme continue conditions that could put pressures on US national security?

Heres a PDF of complete report;
www.stopesso.com...

First and second paragraph of title page;

"The purpose of this report is to imagine the unthinkable � to push the boundaries of current research on climate change so we may better understand the potential implications on United States national security".

"We have interviewed leading climate change scientists, conducted additional research, and reviewed several iterations of the scenario with these experts. The scientists support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is extreme in two fundamental ways. First, they suggest the occurrences we outline would most likely happen in a few regions, rather than on globally. Second, they say the magnitude of the event may be considerably smaller".

My reason for reply is not to debunk climate change because I believe in the serious nature of the problem.

My issue is that reports and discussion are weighted to a conspiracy by the pentagon and Bush administation in a cover-up that does'nt seem to exist. Witness the ability to download the PDF of an UNclassified report.

The pentagons job is to address worst case scenarios and their possible effects on US security.

The political spin on this story makes me incredulous!

OH NO! Oh wait. Um, people do realize the Earth has heated up and cooled down several times in it's several billion year life span? They are Ice Ages and tropical ages. The planet warming up is natural, no reason for it to cause famine and such.

ok...time to stock up!! on? a solution should be formulated? or is there one.
how long is the famine/bad weather lasting...
*starts screaming like a 6yr old girl*

on a more serious note? these things happen...food resources? i think every1 faired off amazingly well on grain this year...is this an indication that next year wont be so good.
however, the U.S does have the fattest population in the world, so maybe a little starvation ought to do ya good for a change (seeing as the U.S is already in debt due to the war, i doubt that they'll be able to afford imported grain).
must play the waiting game, we shall soon find out

Cyrus

this is nothing new to those of us who studied up on the subject
its the culmination that is coming together finally
keep your mind on the infinite
our bodies are impermanent

(Yahoo)
"by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Me! Look where I live! lol

When I look out of my window I can se the ocean....OOPS!

I'm already packing my stuff...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now for real let's hope that these are really worst case scenarios because other wise our lives will become intersting for the worst.

I think it is best to figure out what is the primary cause of the climate change before altering geopolitics as a knee jerk reaction.