Leaked US report warns climate change may bring famine, war

[Walter]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1050857.htm


Leaked US report warns climate change may bring famine, war

A secret report prepared by the Pentagon warns that climate change may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater risk than terrorism, the British newspaper Observer said.

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

The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and President George W Bush's scepticism about global warning - a stance that has stunned scientists worldwide.

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 newspaper 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 US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) consultant and a former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Dough 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.

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

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

-- AFP

[herbivore]

Science Matters: Is our climate nearing the tipping point? An Editoral by Dr. David Suzuki (http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-03/s_13664.asp)


A report that argues global warming is a greater threat to world security than terrorism and predicts a warming future where "disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," may sound like it came from a radical environmental group — but it didn't. Unless you consider the Pentagon a radical environmental group.

The report, submitted last fall, but only recently released to the media, looked specifically at what would happen if the world's climate were to abruptly shift, rather than change at a constant pace, as most people naturally assume it would do.

Of course, this is the Pentagon talking about worst-case scenarios. And the more skeptical among us could argue that the Pentagon probably has a scenario for what would happen if Canada tried to invade the U.S. by building a bridge made of Tim Horton's doughnuts across Lake Ontario.

Inventing scenarios is just what they do.

But it would be a mistake to simply dismiss the Pentagon climate report, because it is based on real science. Abrupt climate change is both scary and plausible — and we've known about it for some time. Our atmosphere and our oceans are all part of one big heat-transfer system, and ocean currents are a key driver of our climate. If we somehow change these currents, we change the climate — and this can happen very quickly.

So how would we alter ocean currents? Well, the greatest and most mysterious ocean current is called the thermohaline circulation, or the Great Ocean Conveyor, which exchanges warm and cool water around the world.

It moves slowly, but the amount of water it carries is massive — the equivalent of 100 Amazon Rivers. Part of this conveyor is the Gulf Stream, which brings warm water from the equator up to Europe, where it releases its heat, cools and sinks near the Arctic. The Gulf Stream helps moderate Europe's climate. Without it, most of the continent would be much colder.

But as we add heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere and warm the planet, we increase the amount of fresh water that melts from glaciers and Arctic ice.

This fresh water is less dense, so it doesn't sink, which slows down the Gulf Stream. If it were to slow significantly or stop (which appears to have happened in the past), Europe could very quickly plummet into a little ice age. Much of North America would also become cooler, drier and windier.

As the Pentagon points out, this could wreak havoc on agricultural production and the economy, leading to major social upheavals.

The Pentagon report may be a worst-case scenario, but it's about time the U.S. government finally took an interest in climate science. In February, dozens of prominent U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel Laureates, signed a statement of complaint against the Bush administration for misusing science "by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government's own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice."

We must hope that, with the Pentagon now actually examining climate science seriously, the Bush administration will give it the attention it deserves and join the rest of the world in working to reduce the heat-trapping gases that cause global warming.

That's not to say Canada has its act together. Although we have adopted Kyoto and committed to reducing our emissions, we haven't actually done anything yet. Over the next few months, our prime minister will unveil his strategy to meet the Kyoto Protocol and start addressing climate change. It had better be good. By acting now, we can avoid the Pentagon's worst-case scenario.

Source: The David Suzuki Foundation