<
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored>
"In August 1974, the CIA produced a study on “climatological research as it
pertains to intelligence problems”. The diagnosis was dramatic. It warned of
the emergence of a new era of weird weather, leading to political unrest and
mass migration (which, in turn, would cause more unrest). The new era the
agency imagined wasn’t necessarily one of hotter temperatures; the CIA had
heard from scientists warning of global cooling as well as warming. But the
direction in which the thermometer was travelling wasn’t their immediate
concern; it was the political impact. They knew that the so-called “little ice
age”, a series of cold snaps between, roughly, 1350 and 1850, had brought not
only drought and famine, but also war – and so could these new climatic
changes.
“The climate change began in 1960,” the report’s first page informs us, “but no
one, including the climatologists, recognised it.” Crop failures in the Soviet
Union and India in the early 1960s had been attributed to standard unlucky
weather. The US shipped grain to India and the Soviets killed off livestock to
eat, “and premier Nikita Khrushchev was quietly deposed”.
But, the report argued, the world ignored this warning, as the global
population continued to grow and states made massive investments in energy,
technology and medicine.
Meanwhile, the weird weather rolled on, shifting to a collection of west
African countries just below the Sahara. People in Mauritania, Senegal, Mali,
Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad “became the first victims of the climate change”,
the report argued, but their suffering was masked by other struggles – or the
richer parts of the world simply weren’t paying attention. As the effects of
climate change started to spread to other parts of the world, the early 1970s
saw reports of droughts, crop failures and floods from Burma, Pakistan, North
Korea, Costa Rica, Honduras, Japan, Manila, Ecuador, USSR, China, India and the
US. But few people seemed willing to see a pattern: “The headlines from around
the world told a story still not fully understood or one we don’t want to
face,” the report said."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
