Pentagon Releases Hypothetical On Sudden Climate Change - Fortune

[hatrack]

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"When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write a report on the national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorks—he helped create futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network, a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away from—at least in public. The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version:

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For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill—its severity fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred, beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020:

At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather variation—allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and its climate has become more like Siberia's.

Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south.

Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth, technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing at America."

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Long but interesting article.

[aquart]

1. Aqueducts. Why do we not have a system of aqueducts?

A huge system that pulls water from a flood region to a dry region or any other that is suffering.

As a construction project it would be huge, national, and employ thousands who can't find jobs just at this little moment.

It would be costly. Let's tax the rich to pay for watering their lawns.

[jmcgowanjm]

3. cost of energy

Texas and DFW wanted to build one from Arkansas.

The cost was something like a barrel of oil for
a barrel of water.

Arkansas is getting ready to build a $319M pumping station
near my hometown in EasternArk to irrigate
rice fields of the Grand Prairie.

The Aquifer is getting too salty.

[hatrack]

5. Texas started talking about this in the late 1960s

The plan called for drawing water from the Mississippi and sending it all the way west to the area around Lubbock to (a) irrigate crops and (b) recharge the aquifer. When the issue finally got to the voters in the mid-1970s, it went down and hasn't been heard from since.

Oh, and the cost-benefit ratio for the plan would have been .27 - that is, every dollar spent on a multi-billion dollar project (and those are 1970s figures) would produce 27 cents of economic benefit.

[HereSince1628]

11. Nebraska floated a proposal for a pipeline to Lake Michigan

of course the problem with such proposals is they make folks realize how valuable water can be. Which makes them very reluctant to part with it.

[amandabeech]

15. There were also rumors that Texas

wanted Lake Michigan water. I'm originally from Michigan and many members of my family still live near Lake Michigan. I'm afraid that any attempt to drain Lake Michigan for the Texans or anyone else would bring out every militia-wannabe with all firearms blazing. And the militia guys would be supplemented with lots of conservation-minded residents doing everything they could without resorting to violence to stop any and all pumping. The slogan was "Let them drink oil!"

On a more serious note, thank you Hatrack for posting these articles and your astute commentary. Do you read the yahoo group "energyresources?"

Amanda

[starroute]

2. This deserves more response than it's gotten

The climate crash of c. 6200 BC almost wiped out the Neolithic in the Middle East. Early towns like Jericho and Catal Huyuk were deserted. Farmers gave up agriculture and turned into nomadic herders. It was so dry that the Caspian Sea dried up entirely. It was 600 years before things got going again.

We are far more vulnerable today than we were then. The Earth is over-populated, and even at current levels of agricultural production, many people are badly under-nourished. The effects of a shift like that described (not to even mention one more like the Younger Dryas, which plunged Europe back into full Ice Age conditions) would be devastating.

[jmcgowanjm]

4. Humans are going to be real busy in 2010

What w/ climate change and this:

The fall of petroleum civilization 
will take place primarily in the U.S. as it is most dependent on limited resources.  
Helpful in understanding trends is an honest
assessment of alternative energy, in terms of potential
for a given population size and number of decades usage.  
"This much is certain: no initiative put in place starting
today can have a substantial effect on the peak
production year.  No Caspian Sea exploration, no
drilling in the South China Sea, no SUV replacements,
no renewable energy projects can be brought on at a
sufficient rate to avoid a bidding war for the remaining oil." 
-  Hubbert's Peak, by Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Princeton University Press, 2001

In short, people cannot think a thought unless
the brain has been previously "wired" to think it.
This is why civilization after civilization runs out
of energy and collapses.

There are absolutely no humane solutions
available to the ruling elite because it is impossible
to solve the problem of human corruption
(i.e., the genetic pre-program to violate norms and seek advantage). Unfortunately, the best the poor can hope for is a
painless death.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dieoff/message/29

[Kool Kitty]

6. There was an article in the UK paper

"The Independent" last week that says that this breakdown of the heat conveyor, the Gulf Stream, may have already begun. And that it would bring a new ice age to northern Europe in our lifetime. Perhaps as early as the next decade. I'll try to find the link again, to post here. It was truly scary.

[Oggy]

7. DU link

On that very subject:-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=331123

[Kool Kitty]

9. Thanks for the link,

even though it frightened me even more. (If that's possible.) I think if this were about to happen, it would effect a whole lot more than just northern Europe. What would happen to all the people displaced by this, assuming they would have some time to get out of the way? What would happen to the growing seasons? It made me think that if you believe we have problems now with all these relatively "small" wars and displacement of people in those areas, add less food and less space to the mix. I would think that this would effect the growing seasons here, too. How would this country handle this? Truly frightening.

[Dogmudgeon]

12. Loss of the NATHC

(That's the North Atlantic Thermohaline Conveyer, baby!)

It breaks down from warm conditions. Increased polar ice melt dilutes the currents, which can not hold together if the salinity falls below a certain point. So the oceanic heat can't be mixed, meaning hotter tropical conditions and colder polar ones.

If it's breaking down now, we can expect very odd weather this year, including an increase in drought conditions as well as more (and more intense) hurricanes, since the oceanic heat will accumulate toward the equator.

Then, next autumn, it will get colder earlier than normal in Europe, and the winter will probably be the most severe in a century or more. It will be a bad winter in North America, but the real blow will arrive in the following winter.

We could also expect to see very strange weather phenomena, especially very powerful thunderstorms in cold and Arctic regions, including "snow tornados", which the Western Inuit peoples called "Dancers". Such storms have only been seen on a handful of occasions; "thundersnow" is much more common, and Delaware got some thundersnow in the snowstorm last week.

Art Bell and Whitley Strieber wrote a semi-fictional book about this, called The Coming Global Superstorm, which is being made into a disaster movie this summer, The Day After Tomorrow. It's a shame that Bell and Strieber have so little scientific credibility, because the book is actually pretty good for popular scientific writing. Strieber's interwoven fiction is excellent, no matter how you feel about his UFO experiences.

It's also possible that the problem will go away soon, since these conditions were getting started back in the late 1950s, too. However, the current climate changes are far more intense than they were 40 years ago, and the Earth is now warmer than it's been in over 3 million years. I personally have been convinced since 1978 that the next ice age is starting, mainly on the strength of the early work done on the subject -- yes, it's that strong a case. The sad thing is that, even though it's a natural phenomenon we are powerless to change, we have accelerated its arrival by hundreds if not thousands of years.

Well, that's my quasi-scientific rant.

--bkl
Edited for movie link and cool picture of NYC on ice.

[Kool Kitty]

13. As dumb as this may sound, the first time I heard about

this was listening to the Art Bell show. I think he has a lot of pertinent info and some great guests sometimes. And I loved that book, it really mad me think. I guess I'm turning into one of those old ladies that always says, You know, when I was a girl...(fill in the rest with whatever homely simile you like), but I have to say that I don't remember the weather being this strange when I was growing up. I don't remember day after day after day of temperatures below freezing. Maybe I'm just not remembering correctly, but so much of what is happening now is not usual. Another thing freaked me out this week, too-the Russian government is paying people to move from Siberia to areas much further south. (It was in an article on the front page of the NYT earlier this week. Someone might have posted about it, but I haven't seen it. But I don't read everything on the boards lately.) May not be related at all to the subject, but I sure thought it was an interesting coincedence.

[amandabeech]

16. If Europe were to become nearly uninhabitable,

I wonder whether all the European settler states (for example U.S., Canada, Aus., NZ,Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile) would be pressed to accept European refugees. Those dual pressures might trigger some real nastiness between those wanting to accept refugees from ancestral homelands versus those willing to take refugees from bordering or nearby countries which are suffering more versus those who will not want to take any refugees.

I also wonder whether some European states might try to retake any African areas which might still receive sufficient precipitation for agriculture, say in west or south Africa.

I pray that this does not happen. The challenges presented by the end of the fossil fuel era are challenging enough.


Amanda

[meow mix]

8. social/political changes

everywhere theres oil or water, we are there. mixin it up.
seems like forward preparations..getting into timely position?
anyways,
theyve done some good speculating - but among other things i often wonder how our society and government will accomdate the coming changes.
will we be spartans?
*shudder*

[Kool Kitty]

10. Good question.

(And, dang, that's a great picture of Clark...)

[SoCalDem]

14. I see boobies....Oh the HUMANITY.. hide the children

*my eyes*

It is a very good pic though :)