Pentagon tells Bush in Secret Report: Climate Change Will Destroy Us

Global Warming & Climate Change Forum

Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document 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 threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.

A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.

One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.

Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the 'tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.

Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: 'If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.

'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

'You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.

Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.

Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. 'This is depressing stuff,' he 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.'

Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. '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 said.

'The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'

So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.

The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed 'Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.

Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. 'It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'

Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. 'This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.

Source: Guardian Unlimited (UK)

And that's just the beginning: they left out the part about the sky falling.

The reason that report was considered "secret" was because they didn't want anyone to know they were paying agents dumb enough to write all that.

So I take it that you are the worlds leading authority on climate change Sean?

No, but I know a line of BS when I hear it. Mark my words and remember this day when in 2020 the world doesn't look a hell of a lot different than it does today. I have common sense, strong logic skills, and (as an engineer) a solid understanding of "how things work" and I tell you without a shade of a doubt that this is a load of crap.

PS: And do you really think the U.S. is in the habit of allowing "secret" documents to fall into the hands of British tabloid papers? Give me a break!

Well going on the way the US runs it's intelligence it would not suprise if it fell in to the wrong hands evn though the observer is hardly a tabloid paper in fact it is a well respected paper.
But look at the facts we know that climate change is happening and only the biggest fool would deny it.
This is also not the first report of it's kind just few years back there were people claiming that by the year 2080 some parts of the world could face another ice age plus the fact that scientists and meterologists have been saying the same things, that if we do not control our pollution output then we will be in serious trouble weather wise.
You have bodies like the UN urging countries to sign up to things like Kyoto and the clean air regulations that have to be in place by 2010, why because again this affects the ozone layer and can affect weather.
I do not know what will happen by 2010 nobody does but I can tell you that in some parts of the UK people are seing the results of climate change, like in some parts of S. England flodding is now a yearly thing wheras twenty years ago it was rare experts pit it down to climate change. every year the whole of the UK has very hot summers with tempratures rising every year again climate change. So if there is prooof of it happening now what makes you so damn sure it will just suddenly stop.

Because those jerks don't have a clue as to how planetary systems work yet. They've only just begun. The carbon cycle is so long-lived that no human has witnessed it turn a full cycle. The ocean currents are so vast and intricately interconnected, that they've only recently gained a fundamental understanding of how it all works together. You're talking orders of thousands of years for these cycles to completely turn over. For a water molecule originating in the arctic to completely traverse the currents of the planet before it finally arrives where it began. For immeasurable volumes of atmospheric gasses to be processed through aquatic and terrestrial plant and animal life, and the contaminant filtration processes - it's like figuring out the equations that balance the cosmos - that's why weather forecasters still can't tell you exactly which cities will see rain and which will not tomorrow.

Regarding global warming; sure there's evidence that there are slight increases in temperature around the globe, but guess what? Because of the limited understanding of the complete carbon cycle, they're not even sure it's not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Same goes for the perpetually opening and closing of the "hole" in the ozone layer.

We're making leaps and bounds when it comes to pollution control and I think it's the right thing to do. I think that unchecked, we could have a biological disaster on our hands in the next 100 years whether or not it is accompanied by an ice age. But at the same time, I'm not willing to make hasty determinations about the sky falling just because some dork just figured out Pollution 101.

You say "only the biggest fool would deny" that climate change is coming, but I beg to differ: there are plenty of VERY smart people who are not entirely convinced that the sensationalist views are correct because they're based only on partial information. While I am in favor of "doing the right thing", I recognize that there is a due process associated with that, and I'm quite eager to see the research continued for real, solid scientific analysis of these complex systems and answers. In the meantime, I refuse to accept either side of the story as gospel truth until there is incontrovertible evidence.

I can't tell you the number of times I heard the world was going to end in 1997 and that one came and went without incident.

I thought that was known by one and all....? I know that the world would one day just go..... bleh suddenly. and ever since I heard about global warming, I was curious and went into research.....

did they lie to us, at least?

Top British Scientist 'gagged' After Warning of Global Warming Threat

Downing Street tried to muzzle the Government's top scientific adviser after he warned that global warming was a more serious threat than international terrorism.

Ivan Rogers, Mr Blair's principal private secretary, told Sir David King, the Prime Minister's chief scientist, to limit his contact with the media after he made outspoken comments about President George Bush's policy on climate change.

In January, Sir David wrote a scathing article in the American journal Science attacking Washington for failing to take climate change seriously. "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism," he wrote.

Support for Sir David's view came yesterday from Hans Blix, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector, who said the environment was at least as important a threat as global terrorism. He told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost: "I think we still overestimate the danger of terror. There are other things that are of equal, if not greater, magnitude, like the environmental global risks."

Since Sir David's article in Science was published, No 10 has tried to limit the damage to Anglo-American relations by reining in the Prime Minister's chief scientist.

In a leaked memo, Mr Rogers ordered Sir David - a Cambridge University chemist who offers independent advice to ministers - to decline any interview requests from British and American newspapers and BBC Radio 4's Today .

"To accept such bids runs the risk of turning the debate into a sterile argument about whether or not climate change is a greater risk," Mr Rogers said in the memo, which was sent to Sir David's office in February. "This sort of discussion does not help us achieve our wider policy aims ahead of our G8 presidency [next year]." The move will be seized on by critics of Mr Blair's stance over the Iraq war as further evidence that he is too subservient to the Bush administration. It will also be seen as an attempt to bolster the Prime Minister's case for pre-emptive strikes to combat the threat of international terrorism, which he outlined in a speech on Friday.

Sir David, who is highly regarded by Mr Blair, has been primed with a list of 136 mock questions that the media could ask if they were able to get access to him, and the suggested answers he should be prepared to give. One question asks: "How do the number of deaths caused by climate change and terrorism compare?" The stated answer that Sir David is expected to give says: "The value of any comparison would be highly questionable - we are talking about threats that are intrinsically different."

If Sir David were to find himself pushed to decide whether terrorism or climate change was the greater threat, he was supposed to answer: "Both are serious and immediate problems for the world today." But this was not what Sir David said on the Today programme on 9 January when the Science article was published.

Asked to explain how he had come to the conclusion that global warming was more serious than terrorism, Sir David replied that his equation was "based on the number of fatalities that have already occurred" - implying that global warming has already killed more people than terrorism.

The leaked memo came to light after a computer disk was discovered by an American freelance journalist, Mike Martin, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Seattle, where Sir David gave a lecture.

"The disk was lying on the top of a computer in the press room and I popped it into the machine to see what was on it," said Mr Martin, whose own article is published on the ScienceNow website, an online service operated by Science.

Mr Rogers' memo, written a few days before the Seattle conference, was aimed at limiting his exposure to questions from US and British media. While in Seattle, Sir David sat on a panel of scientists at one carefully stage-managed press conference, but his press office said he was too busy to give interviews afterwards to journalists.

Lucy Brunt-Jenner, Sir David's press officer, said she could not comment on internal government documents but said it would be wrong to suggest that Sir David was in any way muzzled. "Sir David had a press conference and he was available to the media at three times," Ms Brunt-Jenner said.

But Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, said: "It's a clear attempt by the Prime Minister to keep Sir David quiet. The Government's chief scientist is the nation's chief scientist and I'd expect him to say what he thinks."

Source: Independent (UK)

A $60 million program for researching sudden or unexpected changes in the climate would be created under legislation that won approval Tuesday by a Senate committee.

By voice vote and with little discussion, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee sent the bill to the full Senate for consideration.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told fellow committee members the bill was important for Alaska. He had previously expressed concern with climate warming problems in his home state such as melting permafrost, possible village relocations, receding Alaskan forests and submerged air strips.

Under the bill, the research program for studying "abrupt climate change" — rapid alterations that people, animals and plants have difficulty adapting to — would be established within the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It would be run by NOAA's Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research.

In October, the Senate rejected a plan to address global warming. Senators voted 55-43 to defeat a bill co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., who heads the Commerce committee, and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., that would have cut industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

All the sponsors of the abrupt climate change bill — Maine Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Washington state Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt. — voted for the McCain-Lieberman bill, while Stevens voted against it.

McCain and Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, the committee's most senior Democrat, also have asked congressional investigators to detail the effects of global warming on federally owned lands and coastal waters, an environmental group said Tuesday.

San Francisco-based Bluewater Network said its 2002 report on the subject prompted the senators' request that the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, estimate the impact of global warming and predict the timing of the consequences.

Source: AP

The release of the Pentagon report, ?Imagining the Unthinkable,¦ illustrates that even in the most restrictive political administrations there are those who will do the right thing.

Andrew Marshall, an 82 year old Pentagon legend, found a perfect way to release troubling research. He chose an investment publication which is generally read by those with discretionary income to invest in the stock market. The information is common knowledge within climate research circles, but now, due to Mr. Marshall-s astute action, it is beginning to reach mainstream academics and will soon be available to the average Joe on TV and in newspapers. Thank goodness.

It is imperative that follow-up reports step away from the hard science and begin to better illustrate the concrete ways an average person-s life will change when this shift takes place. This information will help us prepare and train our children. Because Mr. Marshall is primarily tasked with forecasting military issues, the Pentagon report is narrowly focused and as such has shortcomings.

An internet search on Ice Age history in North America points to severe climate change north of the Carolina-s. This means that the U.S. population will not be immune and people who live in densely populated cities north of 35N are vulnerable. Internet records detail Appalachian rainfall at one fifth to one third of present values, periglacial steppe-tundra or polar deserts north of 42N, animal extinctions and tree survival pushed far south. It is apparent that the key to surviving an ice age is adequate food and water. Humans have previously adapted to the 5-10 degree temperature swings, common in an Ice Age, without air conditioning and central heat, but we have not learned to survive without sustenance.

It is not dramatic to imagine that oil and nuclear weapons could lose value rather than gain value. After all, you can-t eat or drink them and the production of both pollutes vast amounts of water. We will need the water to feed our populace. Furthermore, communities may find themselves surviving in isolated pockets without government support. Grocery stores will not have enough for everyone, so growing a garden and collecting or recycling water will be necessary to save our families. History shows that multi-climate agriculture allowed people to survive Ice Age climate shifts. Europe-s post Ice Age demise was only prevented because explorers landed in Mexico where vast Indigenous civilizations thrived and were consuming complex and varied foods Europeans had never seen.

Additionally, these foods were grown in both cold, high mountain elevations and in warmer valley climates. We need to learn from this history and empower our elementary school children who will be in their teens and 20-s when the shift occurs. Since many modern children have never grown their own food, grade schools might add lessons about foods that grow in the cold and heat, how to make a simple greenhouse and how much it takes to feed a family.

Science projects could be geared to feature simplified solar and wind energy, water filtration and reclamation. We can all experiment in our yards, or in pots, and practice the basics of intensive gardening and growing plant foods, like the Three Sisters, which provide amino acids and protein we normally get from meat. When those plants go to seed we can collect and store the seed for next years garden. A complimentary step would be community gardens, bringing neighbors together to set up systems that work for their region. Learning these valuable skills now will protect us when reductions in air flight, shipping, train and trucking transport make grocery store supplies decline.

One component overlooked in the Pentagon report, is our diminishing magnetic field and the magnetic reversals that have occurred during previous Ice Age periods. It is shortsighted to think that the current north/south pole will remain fixed during a thermohaline circulation collapse. The report-s authors paint other countries as the ones who will run out of food resources, when it may be the U.S. who becomes the disadvantaged neighbor, all the while leading up to the crisis by alienating the very countries that could save us.

The most ancient cultures in the world live in the America-s, Asia and the Middle East and they have all survived Ice Ages. Knowing this, the authors should have edited assessments from an archaeologist who suggested that military instigated decimation of Indigenous Americans by plague was a ?success¦ in leading to peaceful times. His data ignores several thousand years of peaceful Indigenous survival before Europeans ?raided¦ the America-s to replenish their depleted resources.

It is also well documented that Hitler studied the U.S. Native American genocide as a template for his plan to murder non-Aryans in Germany. To include intentional plague in the context of a climate shift assessment such as this is problematic from both a humane and a political standpoint. Many people worldwide would argue that Earth has never experienced peace since the introduction of plague as a military weapon. It only made it easy to take the next step and consider nuclear destruction excusable as well.

In fact, the greatest risk to surviving the coming Ice Age may be the pre-occupation with military weapons, especially biologicals and nuclear, which are notoriously unstable and pollute the very resources we need to grow food. Current storage methods that don-t account for ice age climate swings, magnetic reversal, volcanic activity, extreme tides and huge volumes of water moving from existing areas will destroy these nations before famine even has a chance to take hold.

Furthermore, the very existence of these weapons guarantees that some soft, weak human, intent on stealing another-s food, rather than doing the labor to grow his own, will take the easy way out. We should not be afraid of this challenge but should instead embrace it as a catalyst for change.

Every ancient tribal culture talks about the great flood. It is the reason that modern people developed the story of Noah. Further research shows that Indigenous peoples have chronicled these cycles for thousands of years and did so to survive these climatic shifts. Knowing that Indigenous people know the secret to Ice Age survival, one might ask, why do we still allow colonial policies which encourage the destruction of their cultures, when most modern scientists can only fantasize about the changes that are just around the corner? Global dialogue, peace and cooperation is the only solution.

We need an immediate worldwide forum to address a safe and stable means of isolating and destroying weapons that pollute water supplies. Let-s not be shortsighted and think that all will be as it has been. What if the magnetic shift causes man-made orbiting objects to fall? What if export and import are no longer part of the equation? Would solar on our roofs, better insulation and incorporating solar adaptors for computers, radio and television keep our society stable? Perhaps we should be planting trees and curtailing heat and CO2 producing activities to buy us time. Thinking outside of the box now will reinforce our natural human resiliency to address a challenge and find the most comfortable way to survive it. This is of course what we humans do best-adapt.

Source: Pravda .ru

Hey Marc Thats an interesting story. I actually read that story in a fake magazine. The magazine was called The National Enquier. I also read it from another fakey called Weekly World News. Is it a fake article you have. I didn't read the whole thing did you say it was fake? I dont know, it may be true, I just didn't know those magazines put out real articles. But hey get back to me. Word to ya mutha!

sounds like a movie called the day after tomorrow