[IP] more on more on Pentagon: "Climate Change Will Destroy Us"

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

From: "John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.com>

Dave,

For IP, if you like.

Peter Schwartz published a book last summer,
 Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence (Gotham Books)
that includes this scenario.  It was written up in Forbes, Economist,
Financial Times, according to GBN:
 http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=14200

It appears that Schwartz, GBN, and Andrew Marshall have succeeded in
raising the topic's prominence further by having the Pentagon commission
a report on it:
 http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1050857.htm

Fortune has published a summary of the report:
 http://sierratimes.com/04/02/09/ar_weather.htm

The basic scenario is not new; it has been on Nova, and there is a NOAA
web page explaining abrupt climate change in the Younger Dryas:
  http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/abrupt.html
 ``Ice core records from Greenland show in less than a decade there
 was a sudden warming of around 15 degrees Celsius (27oF) of the annual
 mean temperature. At the same time a doubling of annual precipitation
 occurred.''

There's a 2002 book, Abrupt Climate Changes: Inevitable Surprises,
by the National Academy of Sciences:
 http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10136.html?onpi_newsdoc121101
 ``it is not a matter if such events will occur in the future but when.''

Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
in Massachusetts, discussed the issue at Davos last year.

None of this was enough to get the issue into governmental and
public consciousness.  Apparently it took Peter Schwartz spelling
out the likely social consequences and Andrew Marshall commissioning
a DoD report on it to make this meme self-propagating.

To quote from the Fortune summary of the Peter Schwartz DoD report:

``Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting that the
plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the
scientific community, and perhaps all of the political community,
are prepared to accept. In light of such findings, we should be asking
when abrupt change will happen, what the impacts will be, and how we can
prepareâ??not whether it will really happen. In fact, the climate record
suggests that abrupt change is inevitable at some point, regardless of
human activity. Among other things, we should:

``+ Speed research on the forces that can trigger abrupt climate change,
how it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.

``+ Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play out, including
ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on key food-producing
regions.

``+ Identify "no regrets" strategies to ensure reliable access to food
and water and to ensure our national security.

``+ Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive migration,
and food and water shortages.

``+ Explore ways to offset abrupt coolingâ??today it appears easier
to warm than to cool the climate via human activities, so there may be
"geo-engineering" options available to prevent a catastrophic temperature
drop.''

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.com> 

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