Climate Change Hysteria, circa 2004

If this were not pathetic, it would be laughable. It’s about climate change hysteria. It was not minted yesterday. Serious scientists have been trying to enhance their own importance by pretending to be prophets of climatedoom. And they have been doing so for years.

Among their absurd predictions is this one, presumably fed to President George W. Bush in 2004-- that is, seventeen years ago. It promised, on the authority of no less than the Pentagon, that Europe would be plunged into chaos by 2020.

If you were wondering what the great minds of the Pentagon were doing when they were not winning wars, now you know.

The Guardian reported dutifully in 2004:

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.

I will not burden you with the entirety of the story. It’s available on the Guardian site. The most amazing part is how familiar it seems. The panel of eminent scientists who all agreed that climate catastrophe was looming will never admit that it was wrong. Now we have new panels of eminent scientists who assure us, on the basis of their dogmatic belief, that the end is nigh. Now, however, they are accompanied by hysterical schoolgirls and assorted radicals who want to disrupt everything from British traffic to Sen. Joe Manchin..

Some people never learn. And they certainly do not admit to any fault or flaw in their reasoning.