February 23, 2004
Pentagon tells Bush: Climate change can destroy us.
This came across my news feed: Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us. World: Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war· Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years · Threat to the world is greater than terrorism.
This is going to have a profound effect on the 2004 election campaign. President Bush has been unwilling to admit that global warming even exists. Now he is confronted with a real potential threat to our coastal towns and cities, and the global threats anarchy brought on by the world's lack of resources or time to minimize the threat and prepare mankind for a major environmental event.
President Bush has spent America's credibility on the environment, having none left as this breaking story circulates around the globe. The President has helped his Republican Congress put is so far into debt so far into the future, that we may not have the resources to prepare for this threat to the U.S. and the world. One thing our President has done is to provide for unprecedented military growth and dispersement. Now if anyone tries to blame or retalliate against the U.S. for not signing the Kyoto treaty, or if any nations drowning try to exit their borders with the intent of moving to the U.S., we at least can put down that threat in a quick damn hurry.
Do you trust this President to deal with this looming potential threat. In order to deal with it, he would have to admit he was wrong on the Kyoto agreement. Have you ever heard this President admit an error, a mistake, or ever reveal that he is fallible and human like the rest of us? I for one cannot trust this President to get over his reelection long enough to pay one hour of serious rational deliberation on the Pentagon's warning.
Posted by David R. Remer at February 23, 2004 02:18 PMKnowing the way Bush deals with things like this, he’ll probably re-brand it as the “Reduction in School Snow Day” Initiative and add it as a key component to his “No Child Left Behind” act.
Posted by: blipsman at February 23, 2004 02:52 PMJohn Edwards and John Kerry both are very concerned about global environmental policies, and the U.S.’s lack of leadership (to put it mildly) under the Bush administration. Both want to restore the U.S.’s commitment to, and credibility on, the environment. It would be a shame to see the eventual Democratic nominee undercut by an independent candidate siphoning off votes, leading to Bush’s re-election.
Posted by: Concerned Citizen at February 23, 2004 03:21 PMcanada anyone?
great report david…although i hate doomsday reports…..an interesting report nonetheless….
let’s watch and see if the news media pick up on this report at all….(they won’t).
and as for the report….well….i didn’t need to sleep anymore anyway….
Posted by: rob at February 23, 2004 03:31 PMThis pentagon report could be the mother of all wake up calls. While the report says the United States would be able to weather this climate change, our reliance on oil could drag us into a third world war over oil. This would put a strain on our ability to defend against the mass exodus of people from hard hit areas to our shores. Not to mention adversely affect how well we do in fact weather a destructive global climate change. And rob is right, we probably wont see major news outlets pick this up. In fact, I just checked CNN. not a peep.
Posted by: Guy at February 23, 2004 04:41 PMMaybe since it comes from the Pentagon, Bush might actually pay it some heed. I hate doomsday reports as well, but let’s face it. If we continue to poison our rivers, pollute our air, etc, we could very well be in for a doomsday scenario.
Posted by: Nate Daniel at February 23, 2004 05:11 PM“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.”
That part comes as no suprise really. It is what so many people like him do and it is what causes so many problems.
Posted by: Adam at February 23, 2004 06:13 PMI wouldn’t be surprised if conducting worst case scenario studies is simply a standard practice in the intelligence community. I doubt very much this report stated that climate change *will* destroy us, as some of these headlines claim. Rather, this is an awareness project, and a wisely undertaken one. But I doubt this means that the pentagon’s position is that climate change is actually happening.
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at February 23, 2004 07:53 PMGaelen, reassure yourself the world is safe in Bush’s hands any way you please. Until we see more of this issue exposed and get a response from the Whitehouse, I am going to be concerned and start demanding some answers. That document leaked from the CIA for a reason, and since someone’s career is on the line for leaking, that reason must be pretty damned important.
David, don’t get me wrong. I do not think the world is safe in Bush’s hands. On every front I care about (most notably national security), I am absolutely convinced that Bush has done the wrong thing.
Posted by: Gaelen Burns at February 23, 2004 11:37 PMMy apology, Gaelen. I misread your healthy skepticism. I read an article a few months ago by a scientist who laid out the scenario that appears to be the subject of the CIA memo. His and other’s research provides a lot of evidence that major shifts in the global temperatures can and apparently did usually occur over a very short period of time, a few years. In geologic time that is instantaneously. There appears to be a threshhold trigger mechanism which if set off under the right conditions result in a rapid change in climate over as little as 5 to 10 years.
This trigger could be El Nino or La Nina and the prerequisite for a rapid change may be particulate saturation in the atmosphere set off by volcanic activity or coal and fossil fuel burning. They do not know what the trigger is, there may be more than one, and this guy I read didn’t know specifically what the preconditions must be. What he said they do have evidence of is that the change will likely occur abruptly.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 23, 2004 11:56 PMBeware of what you read in British tabloids.
The report was hardly a secret and fortune magazine talked about it on Feb. 09.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,582584-1,00.html
Posted by: ouchmyhead at February 24, 2004 03:51 PMTo anyone with any interest in the subject try reading “Chaos: Making a New Science
by James Gleick (December 1988)” . If you understand chaos theory, and that the weather is a chaotic system, then you will be really scared. Chaotic systems will remain very stable through a wide range of inputs. However they are also prone to suddenly seek a new stable state.
Which is a fancy way of saying things can go to hell very quickly (like during a span of one year).
I cannot image Kerry or Bush being capable of handling this responsibly. It’s far too big and they are just too political. Every civilization has encountered a crisis that was beyond its institutions ability to handle, this is ours. Enjoy the ride!
I could see Kerry jumping on the Kyoto agreement as a tactical maneuver to reassure the international community that the U.S. once again has a President who shares the world’s concerns and desires to work with other nations in resolving issues of common concern.
I can’t see Bush reversing himself on this issue, he has reversed himself far too many times as it is for a reelection cycle.
Posted by: David R. Remer at February 24, 2004 09:09 PMAdam refers to the report Scientific Integrity in Policymaking:An Investigation into the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science.”Copyright 2004, Union of Concerned Scientists. at www.ucsusa.org. This document details what it calls a systematic approach on the part of the Bush administration to supress scientific information incompatible with administration beliefs about the environment, biology, and other areas of government funded research. The Pentagon, sadly enough, is one of the very few organizations that can still get the attention of this administration. No organization in opposition to current policies can afford to neglect the Union’s statement. Never mind Haliburton-this free document will give you all the evidence you need to prove that Bush and Co. are dangerously ill-informed.
Posted by: Michael R. at March 2, 2004 07:46 AM
