The Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us – 2004
By Paul Homewood
In 2004, the Pentagon’s experts said climate change was going to destroy us all by 2024:
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.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver
Fortunately, President Bush had more sense than the world’s leading climate experts put together!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Most of paragraphs, 2,3 and 4 are not far off the mark. The thing is when they refer to “abrupt climate change” what are they actually saying? A colder planet or a warmer one? With what is looking like a Solar/Grand Solar minimum of its way, some of those predictions are or won’t be far off being wrong. Today, food prices are rising, foodstuffs are suffering with production, and, most of Scotland, including the islands areas, are currently under snow and from satellite photo’s, looking like Siberia. As I say was the reference to a warming climate or a cooling climate?
There I think is your answer to Josh’s cartoon about the smartest man in the room – it was George W – that would be causing a few warmists’ heads to explode.
I note that Sir John Houghton, Chief Executive of the (US) meteorological Office, supported this document and likened the climate change threat to that of terrorism. He was also a prime lead contributor to the IPCC Assessment Reports.
I have his book “The Physics of Atmospheres” (1986) in which he states (page 16):
“ for Mars and the Earth the greenhouse effect is halted when water vapour becomes saturated with respect to ice or water. For Venus the diagram illustrates the ‘runaway greenhouse effect’.
This statement relates to a diagram showing the planet temperatures plotted against the vapour pressure of water vapour in the atmospheres, showing the halted effect with respect to earth.
Seems he had changed his mind since then. Otherwise he would perhaps have been advocating cloud seeding in the fight against this purported terrorist threat.
It is interesting here that the IPCC openly admits that it has little to say about the workings of cloud structures in the AGW debate, apart from assuming a positive feedback.
I have his later book “Global Warming, The Complete Briefing”, so sad to see a proper scientist descend to advocacy. One of his first graphs is a hockey stick of insurance claims in dollars!, which he claimed proved global warming. Shocking is not the word, because they are all at it.
He was UK met office CEO and (in his typical ardent-Christian style) was convinced that man’s doom was nigh and thus swallowed the CO2 hypothesis hook line and sinker then amplified it in the IPCC. He was part of the cover-up of the, still uncertain, effect of clouds and water vapour in the IPCC reports.
The general world view of GW Bush’s IQ was not complimentary, so, if the sum of the Climate doom merchants IQs was less that his, they must have been so low as to be inverted geniuses. Maybe that’s how they have won the battle of the meja!
Mind you , for once a testable prediction was made;
“As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions”
although; ” suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change. ” may just have been “wait and see” it being too late to do anything about it. An own goal by the authors I think.
however; “‘Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,’ concludes the Pentagon analysis. ‘Once again, warfare would define human life.’
The dream of the universal soldier.
They may be better soldiers than prophets.
“The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, . . .”
Andrew Marshall apparently was (now 97 ?) a very bright and influential guy who had a long career in the US defense advisory industry. However, my though is that something in his young life caused a “going off the rails” event as he aged.
A similar idea occurred to me regarding James “Death Trains” Hansen. His family was from Iowa. The Cedar Rapids and Missouri R .R. (later Chicago and North Western) reached Denison, James’ home town, in 1866. I could make up a story, but someday maybe James will tell the world the real story — if there is one.
The odd thing is that there is, in fact, a real “death train” event associated with Denison, about which I knew nothing when my mind conjured up the connection to Hansen.
The real event is gruesome, but you can find it here: NYT 2002 – 11 dead
Sorry, got on to the wrong track there, so you can get back to Andrew Marshall’s part of the climate scam.
I have Hansen’s 2009 book “Storms of my Grandchildren” (“The truth about the coming climate catastrophe and our last chance to save humanity”)
Messiah complex is probably one of his afflictions.
Once again a Republican President can see clearly through the smoke and mirrors of catastrophic climate change and calls it for what it is.
A scam.
‘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.’
Whatever the writers of the report were smoking, it must have been strong stuff.
I failed to see the connection between European cities sunk and Britain plunged into a “Siberian” climate by 2020. It would seem to me that the predicted “Siberian” climate would involve a lot of ice build-up and thus the seas would lower. That’s how it happened in the past. What new phenomenon have we missed?
The new phenomenon is the the infinite contradictions of climate science.
Exactly! And what anyway is a Siberian Climate? Is it the very cold, dry winters and hot summers of the south or the permafrost of the Taymyr Peninsula? Or the cold, cloudy shores of the Sea of Okhotsk? Big place, Siberia.
Did Rumsfeld classify this as a “known unknown”?
Jack Broughton pointed out that George Bush was the smartest person in the room in 2004.
Thank God we have Donald Trump in the White House to defund the Ecoloons and other manifestations of “Stoopid Government”.
Amen. Last week some Senator was blathering to President Trump about his self-anointed point of view. When he stopped, President Trump said: “I don’t care.”
Of course Trump’s plain spoken attitude sends those of the elitist, nuanced community into hyperbolic fits of outrage. We Trump supporters, known to them as the uneducated, unwashed masses, sit back and laugh while applauding the President.