Egg on Their Faces: 2004 DoD Climate Change Report Predicted Nuclear War by 2020 – IOTW Report

Egg on Their Faces: 2004 DoD Climate Change Report Predicted Nuclear War by 2020

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In 2004, The Guardian reported on a Department of Defense climate-change report that would prove “hugely embarrassing” for President George W. Bush. The report predicted that climate change could be America’s greatest national security threat. Yet these climate-change predictions, like so many others, proved nearly the opposite of the truth. Among other things, the report predicted nuclear war, endemic conflict over resources, and European cities underwater by 2020.

None of these things happened.

“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 Guardian reported. The report “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.”

“Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,” the Pentagon report concluded. “Once again, warfare would define human life.” read more

14 Comments on Egg on Their Faces: 2004 DoD Climate Change Report Predicted Nuclear War by 2020

  1. This was almost certainly a contingency case study. The DoD produces these reports for every imaginable scenario, from plagues of crop-devouring locusts to alien invasions to asteroid impacts. This was probably just one of hundreds of scenarios produced in that year alone. It was not “suppressed,” it was just taken with a grain of salt and immediately forgotten, as are most such case studies.

    In the 1920s, the Department of War developed many contingency plans for fighting a future war in the Pacific… against Great Britain. In many ways, Britain was our most likely opponent in that area of the globe at that point in time. The contingency case studies dealing with Japan were, ironically, considered of secondary importance until the 1930s, when the Japanese began seriously ramping up warship production and then invaded mainland Asia.

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