2/22/2004
According to The Observer (UK), a leaked study by the Pentagon has predicted that climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. The report, which has been suppressed, predicts that Europe, including Britain, will experience by 2020 a drop in average temperature of 6°F. Its climate will become colder and drier and begin to resemble Siberia in weather patterns.
Now the Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us
Another "little Ice Age" is consistent with what we know about the underseas connector that brings warmth from the tropics to Europe via the Gulf Stream. The connector depends upon the evaporation of water in the north Atlantic increasing its salinity and thereby causing it to sink. A large supply of fresh water, such as from the melting of the polar cap, would upset the delicate mechanism, just as it did in the 14th Century when a melting glacier in Canada allowed a freshwater lake to flow into the North Atlantic, disrupting the connector for about two centuries.
The report predicts deaths from war and famine in the millions until the planet's population is reduced to a sustainable level. Nuclear proliferation is predictable, with the likelihood of actual nuclear war, as Japan, South Korea and Germany develop the bomb, along with Iran, Egypt and North Korea.
This is just a small portion of the woes that will likely befall us.
According to The Observer article, the study has been suppressed for four months by the Bush administration.
It is almost impossible, even in one's wildest imagination, to conceive of an administration so irresponsible, so dishonest and so craven to the short-term interests of its corporate clients-- and to its own political survival--that it would attempt to suppress such critical knowledge and keep it from the American public.
Frankly, not only is the nation in danger, but the entire world is poised on a precipice that, even if we immediately take countermeasures, we might not be able to escape. Faced with irreversible and cataclysmic climate change, the problem of terrorism will simply fall off the radar screen. We cannot shoot rising waters, storm and soil-eroding wind, nor can we declare a war on the next little (or big) Ice Age without looking silly. Besides, we are the culprits; we have been making war on the Earth and we will eventually discover the awful knowledge that in the process we have been making war on ourselves.
So far, no one has posted the Pentagon report on the Web. The JP will link as soon as we find out.