Pentagon Study Looks at Global Climate

The Pentagon official who commissioned the study, Andrew W. Marshall, issued a brief statement saying it "reflects the limits of scientific models and information when it comes to predicting the effects of abrupt global warming. ... Much of what this study predicts is still speculation."

Marshall, head of the Pentagon's internal think tank, known as the Office of Net Assessments, said his intent was to explore the question of whether countries affected by rapid climate change would suffer or benefit, and whether the change would make them more or less stable.

"More pragmatically, what kinds of climate change might our worldwide forces encounter in the future?" Marshall said.

A spokesman for Marshall, Lt. Cmdr. Daniel Hetlage, said the report, which was commissioned last October and finished earlier this month, did not fully satisfy Marshall's needs. Hetlage said the report would not be passed along to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Still, the authors, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, said their scenario was "not implausible" and would challenge U.S. national security in ways that should be considered immediately. Schwartz is a co-founder of Global Business Network, based in Emeryville, Calif., which says it uses "out-of-the-box" thinking in its consulting services to business and government.

Hetlage said the Pentagon paid about $100,000 for the report.

Schwartz and Randall asserted the plausibility of severe and rapid climate change is higher than most scientists and nearly all politicians think. They also concluded it could happen sooner than generally believed.

"This report suggests that because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of abrupt climate change - although uncertain and quite possibly small - should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern," they wrote.

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On the Net:

Global Business Network and its report: http://www.gbn.org