Cataclysm O' Nine Tails

When WataugaWatch first launched back in December, we were trying to keep up with some of the major environmental threats we were hearing about, particularly those initiated by the Bush administration through quiet rule changes inside their own departments or by blithely ignoring any evidence not congruent with their ruthless extractive philosophies (for examples, see this and this and this and this -- but this repetition grows tiresome. There was so much of it, an environmental crisis approximately every 37 minutes, that we finally more or less gave up trying to alert our readers to even a fraction of the really scary stuff.

Then we see this today, reported in The Guardian, as though our worst fears will now be confirmed only by the foreign press: "Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters." That's the lead. And here's the 2nd graph:

"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."

And Jerry Falwell thought The End would come with homosexual marriage!

Is this secret report true? I am reminded that certain mind-boggling "events" have recently been reported by British tabloids that didn't exactly pan out, like the capture last month of Osama bin Laden. (You remember that, don't you?) But this article comes from The Guardian, one of the most respected and trusted news outlets in the Western Hemisphere.

So let's see ... a secret Pentagon report that the White House is suppressing ... and why? "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."

Considering our previous posting about the Union of Concerned Scientists' coming out and saying publicly that Bush has been distorting scientific fact for political purposes, why would we even doubt that a Pentagon warning of environmental cataclysm within 20 years would be stuffed through the paper shredder of this administration?