posted March 16, 2004 01:10 PM         

Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report
Sun Feb 22, 5:17 PM ET

LONDON (AFP) - A secret report prepared by the Pentagon (news - web sites) warns that climate change may lead to global catastrophe costing millions of lives and is a far greater threat than terrorism.

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

The leak promises to draw angry attention to US environmental and military policies, following Washington's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites) on climate change and President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s skepticism 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 Observer 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 CIA (news - web sites) consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug 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.

Some examples given of probable scenarios in the dramatic report include:

-- Britain will have winters similar to those in current-day Siberia as European temperatures drop off radically by 2020.

-- by 2007 violent storms will make large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable and lead to a breach in the acqueduct system in California that supplies all water to densely populated southern California

-- Europe and the United States become "virtual fortresses" trying to keep out millions of migrants whose homelands have been wiped out by rising sea levels or made unfarmable by drought.

-- "catastrophic" shortages of potable water and energy will lead to widespread war by 2020.

Randall, one of the authors, called his findings "depressing stuff" and warned that it might even be too late to prevent future disasters.

"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 told the paper.

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

Taking environmental pollution and climate change into account in political and military strategy is a new, complicated and necessary challenge for leaders, Randall 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," he said.

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

Last week the Union of Concerned Scientists, an influential and non-partisan group that includes 20 Nobel laureates, accused the Bush administration of having deliberately distorted scientific fact to serve its policy agenda and having "misled the public".

Its 38-page report, which it said took over a year to prepare and was not time to coincide with the campaign season, details how Washington "systematically" skewed government scientific studies, suppressed others, stacked panels with political and unqualified appointees and often refused to seek independent expertise on issues.

Critics of the report quoted by the New York Times denied there was deliberate misrepresentation and called it politically motivated.

The person behind the leaked Pentagon report, Andrew Marsall, cannot be accused of the same partisan politicking.

Marsall, 82, has been an advisor for the defense department for decades, and was described by The Observer as the author of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's plans for a major transformation of the US military

posted March 16, 2004 01:35 PM         

That being said...I have to wonder if it isn't overblown somewhat. I suppose we'll know more in time. A cursory glance at the website for the Union of Concerned Scientists showed nothing on this issue, whereas I would think it would be a lead story. The do denounce the Bush administration on other issues, but have yet to make mention of this story. Perhaps it is still too new.
Their last news update was on March 8th.

posted March 16, 2004 02:27 PM           

This morning as I was watching the usual litany of suffering and death dug up by the necrophiliacs of the mass media, a curious feeling came over me. It was a feeling that I hadn't felt since the morning of 9/11.

Watching wave after wave of anti-terror-related propaganda blurbs, I was reminded of the atmosphere here in the Western world (particularly the U.S) just before that fateful day. For those of you who don't recall, the media's attention had been INTENTLY focused on the subject of children killing children. School shootings were the nightly news darling, and as the media juggernaut advanced its "disarm the populace" drivel, everyone was sure that no tragedy could be more horrible, no cause more worthy than the subjugation of the American populace to its government and the removal of all firearms from the hands of any but the governing authorities. (A sure cure for that annoying phenomenon called civil disobedience...I mean, why not lose ALL of the weapons if weapons are so bad? If defense of American freddoms against foreign powers is the case for government armament, couldn't the same argument be applied to the relationship between the federal government and its citizens? Aren't they really the foreign power in relation to our private lives? Strangers who want to dictate our actions and who have little or no interest in our well-being, only in the resources to be gained by subjugating us.)

Then came September 11th. There hasn't been a peep about juvenile hate crime since. Why? Because they didn't need an excuse to encroach through brainwashing anymore...they now had a public mandate to abolish freedoms. [aka the Patriot(sic) Act]

All of that political rubbish aside, the UNTHINKABLY horrible atrocities had been eclipsed by a tragedy of gargantuan proportions: 9/11. (Although 10 times more people died in the Dow Chemical leak in Bhopal, India..death does not distinguish between corporate negligence and privately funded homicide.)

What I felt this morning is what I have been feeling for quite some time now; that all of this brain rot which we call "reporting on terrorist activities" will quickly become a NON-issue come even more cataclysmic events.

These events ARE coming..make no doubt about it.

The population of California at this time stands at approximately 40 million, 3.8 of them in Los Angeles alone. The death toll come the Great Earth Changes will exceed anything in recorded history, or for that matter, anything in prehistory, since population levels were likely unable to support a tragedy of those dimensions.

Don't believe the hype..terrorism is a non-issue, a distraction and a hypnotic sound blurb designed to sway public sentiment for the same purpose that material man has ALWAYS used such tactics for: to gain and maintain power and to satisfy the greed of a few.

When the day of changes arrives, these Israeli-Iraqi "crises" and domestic "acts of TERROR" will be quickly forgotten as the media ghouls and their cameras start feeding on the corpses of the multi-millions lost to the Great Earth Changes.

The acts of unscrupulous individuals in times of human suffering and loss are truly the greatest tragedy of all.

May God forgive them...and me for judging them so harshly.

posted March 17, 2004 12:04 PM           

As your request is the most urgent, let's address the question of how to move a Taurean from a comfortable rut.

Scare tactics will not work as Taurus people are fearless in opposition and certainly not the type to have their feathers easily ruffled.

Being an Earth sign, they also don't usually subscribe to the "mumbo-jumbo" that we know as intuition.

No, in order to move a Taurean, you need to appeal to their sense of comfort, their love of tranquility and harmony, and their practical sense of economy.

Here's a mental cud for your bull to chew over:

I just relocated from Southern California to Northern Colorado a week ago.

My move-in costs were $500, period. That was the security deposit. First month's rent was free, and since I moved in the middle of the month, next month's rent will be pro-rated.

Utilities are paid by the landlord; that includes electric, water, gas, sewage and garbage.

There is no crime rate to speak of here and, in fact, people leave their doors unlocked at night where we're living.

I am about an hour from Denver, so I have access to a VERY active job market, should I decide to seek employment (I have decided to build a business instead, and the opportunities are VERY wide open and fairly lucrative..I made around $200 last Sunday selling little trinkets at $1 - $5 bucks apiece. I just got here..expect that figure to rise dramatically as I become more familiar with the area and aquire my sources. It would rise astronomically should I move the operation to a venue nearer Denver.)

My fixed monthly expenses are $500...period. Housing is cheap and plentiful and can be found for as low as $150 a month. Groceries are comparatively inexpensive as well. (We spent $56 on a cart full of groceries that we both estimated would have cost between $85 and $100 in California.)

We are less than 45 minutes from the mountains to the west, an hour from cowboy country to the north, and have the luxury of small town living with big city conveniences. (I have within walking distance of my house, two Safeway grocery stores, and there is an Albertson's less than two miles further down the road. I am typing this from the public library which has 10 PCs available, a museum archive and a public park right outside the front door. (Downtown parking, by the way, is FREE.)

There are all of the usual eateries, KFC, Mickey D's BK, Applebee's, Subway and all of that jazz for those that are inclined to eat out.

There are plenty of thrift stores, antique shops and yard sales for the bargain-inclined treasure hunters among us.

Gas stations are numerous and the price of gasoline here stands at $1.56 per gallon. You can pump your gas first...then pay for it. (That's one less trip to the cash register..remind him of that.)

People say "Hi", "Good Morning", "Good Afternoon" and occasionally "Howdy" (which never fails to pull a grin from my pocket.) They actually stop when you ask for directions!

The countryside is beautiful...the living is peaceful and the people here live, work and do things at SUCH a Taurus-like pace that I couldn't see a Taurus person being ANYTHING but in seventh heaven here. (My son has 8 planets in Taurus, Moon in Libra and Mercury in Virgo and he LOVES it here.)

We left with about $2000 dollars in our pocket, no prearranged job, no prearranged housing..just a destination. THAT's how much opportunity abounds in this area.

All of that, and the fact that the Rockies AREN'T about to be covered with water anytime soon, and you have some VERY sensible, very economical, very sound reasons for moving from California, which has become less of a pasture, than it is a corral. Things have changed THAT dramatically since I last lived there back in 1990.

Let your Taurean know that everything he liked about California when you first got there, is out here...plus the benefits of peaceful, healthy, country living are his for the taking if..er AND the Price is Right.

Best of luck.

Love, light and life,

daf

P.S. If you would like the name of the town I'm living in, just email me: dafremen@hotmail.com

(I'd rather not share it online at this time.)

posted March 18, 2004 01:34 PM           

Hopefully we're all delusional.

Love,

posted March 18, 2004 07:27 PM         

I don't believe New York will be dramatically affected because the city has done an amazing job weeding out a lot crime in the past decade. That is a good sign from above.

posted March 18, 2004 07:47 PM         

dafremen: He's been to Omaha, where my family all lives, where everything is exactly as you describe it. He has seen first hand the kindness, the inexpensiveness, the quality of life - but alas he has this beautiful ability to live in denial, and once we returned he insists the "grass isn't greener", despite having seen that it IS.

posted March 20, 2004 05:19 PM         

I hope NY is spared too. I have a soft spot for it. Reducing the negative vibrations will help for sure. Remember Sodom and Gommorrah? It's not random and the damage can be prevented or at least diminished.

FishKitten, I think it sounds wonderful. Who needs Hollywood and it's so-called glamour? Seems to me that you have the best of both worlds. Enjoy!

Good luck with your taurus Isis.

posted March 29, 2004 12:19 PM           

I mean BABY TALK.