Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us

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.

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  thanks to Politics in the Zeros

It's not going to be cold enough in Siberia to...

Lack of snow, or in many cases a shorter frozen season can have a significant impact on the logistics of operations up in the Far North. And here the problems of global warming are likely to have an effect. There is a story in February’s Popular Mechanics about the problems of supplying the North-West Territories of Canada, where the main supply road, some 370 miles runs up the lakes from Yellowknife to the Tahera Diamond Mine. It can only be built after the ice gets to be about a foot thick, since it is planed and graded using heavy equipment, and then, after the ice gets to be 40 inches thick it can carry 70-ton trucks. Last year that did not happen until March, and because the mechanics of the ice road limit speed, it reduces the volume of supplies that can be sent.

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Warming Report to Warn of Coming Drought

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium. At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press. Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive. For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.

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Forest Replacing Tundra At Rapid Rate

Forests of spruce trees and shrubs in parts of northern Canada are taking over what were once tundra landscapes--forcing out the species that lived there. This shift can happen at a much faster speed than scientists originally thought, according to a new University of Alberta study that adds to the growing body of evidence on the effects of climate change.

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No one is willing to address the accelerating growth in the world's population

In the time it takes you to get to the end of this sentence, seven people have been added to the population of the world. At this rate, the United Nations estimates the number of people on the planet will nearly double by the middle of this century. Even with significant reductions in birth rates, the population is expected to increase from 6.7 billion now to 9.2 billion by 2050. These figures are staggering. Yet there was hardly a mention of them in a major story last week: the announcement by Britain's two main political parties of how they will tackle what is commonly agreed to be the biggest threat facing the planet, global warming and ensuing climate change.

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