Deny, delay, downplay: How governments hide climate change intelligence

Last month, the United Kingdom issued a warning that global biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse could threaten the island nation’s national security, and indeed its very prosperity. According to a national security assessment commissioned by the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or DEFRA, there is a high likelihood that “every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse,” a cascading effect that could have major implications for the nation’s food security.

But the 14-page report, entitled “Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security,” made headlines, not just for its alarming contents, but for its omissions.

The assessment, which The Times and The Guardian reported was put together with the help of the intelligence coalition that oversees spy agencies MI5 and MI6, was originally slated to be published in the fall of 2025, but was held by Downing Street for being “too negative.” It wasn’t until Green Alliance, an environmental think tank, filed a Freedom of Information request for the report that DEFRA posted the assessment to its website at all, although notably without the government pomp of a press release or public announcement.

The day after the landmark report hit DEFRA’s website, The Times reported it had seen an internal, unabridged version of the assessment that included warnings much graver than the public-facing report: overwhelming mass migration to Europe, increasingly polarized and populist politics in the UK, NATO conflicts over collapsing food production in Russia and Ukraine, and escalating tensions between China, India, and Pakistan that could potentially lead to nuclear war.

The UK media slammed its government for covering up the existence of the unabridged version, and for delaying the publication of the assessment in the first place. But the government responded to the public criticism with a shrug. “The assessment was developed through cross-government analytical and clearance processes, including consideration of how and when it should be published,” a DEFRA spokesperson told me over email. “It is being published now following the completion of those processes in line with the Government’s commitment to transparency and informed decision-making.”

Western governments have a track record of suppressing climate change intelligence assessments. Take the US spy community, for example. Despite decades of tracking and analyzing national security risks posed by climate change and making many of those intelligence products publicly available, the Office of the Director of Intelligence insists that it must keep a 2008 National Intelligence Assessment on the “National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030” classified. Former intelligence officials have testified publicly about the report, cited the report in literature, and supported calls for the report’s declassification, to no avail. After almost two decades, the report remains classified to this day at the confidential level, the lowest level of national security secrecy.

More recently, in 2022, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese asked the nation’s most senior intelligence chief Andrew Shearer to personally lead a review of security threats posed by the climate crisis. Months later, Albanese refused to release the report or even say when it had been completed. Defense spokesperson for Australia’s Green Party David Shoebridge dubbed the Aussie government the “cult of secrecy in Canberra.” Since then, Albanese has continued to reject calls to make “even a saniti(z)ed version of the assessment public.” (...)

Without Snow and Ice, Humanity Would Be Cooked

I hadn't heard that the planet is experiencing net greening, but that makes sense: of course plant life will take up more carbon in a warmer world. Check out the Triassic for instance.

However, while this is good news, I'd still be very cautious at this stage. And again, the key factor to be monitoring is environmental stress - of which global warming is just one factor.

 miamizsun wrote:
But the groomerz!

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: Yes to common sense.
Which tends to get thrown aside for the sake of generating bigger bucks... from both sides of this discussion.

 SeriousLee wrote: Yep.
I posted something a while back about that. 
The history of all that is pretty astounding.
It's all about the money for "my cause".
Oh... and the scare tactic. It pushes the news cycle.

 KurtfromLaQuinta wrote:

Here's the thing about climate science, we clearly don't know everything but we do know/have very strong evidence for things. We know that burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and have a very good handle on the amount since the industrial revolution. We have direct measurements of the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that are consistent with that. We know how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can suppress the radiation of solar heat back out of the atmosphere. So there are observations and a mechanism to explain those observations. 

Anyone who claims mainstream climate science is wrong, needs to show how that mechanism does not cause atmospheric warming. It is not enough to wave your arms around and say there are changes in solar activity. That does not explain away the effects of increased carbon dioxide on radiation of heat from the atmosphere.

 SeriousLee wrote:

I've actually got a lot of time for a decent dose of skepticism. Acid rain was a huge thing in the eighties until it turned out that most of the forests that were dying were largely artificial (monoculture) and basically not very resilient compared to a natural healthy mixed forest. However, air pollution is nevertheless still a thing and I'm very glad that we cleaned up our act since the eighties, otherwise we'd still be suffering from smog and bad air. A lot of people still are.

But the thing with climate change that most people don't understand is that it should be seen as part of a complex interaction that includes habitat loss, loss of biodiversity, rising sea levels, etc. all of which are measurably happening at very fast rates of change. Now, we can leave the reasons for these changes out of the argument for the moment. Whether the reasons be natural or man made doesn't really change the conclusion, which is that the natural environment is changing radically and quickly. Some species can adapt quickly to such change. Others can't.

In itself, even this is not necessarily a doomsday scenario. But it does mean that most environments are hugely stressed. And that in itself is a bad thing. It means they are less diverse and less resilient to the next natural catastrophe, such as an eruption or some other trigger. It also makes us more and more dependent on dwindling resources. Rising demand, fewer resources.. you can see where this is headed.

That alone is why we should be pursuing a very conservative approach to nature. Otherwise we are exposing ourselves to wild unexpected volatility as things try to adapt to unforeseen consequences or unexpected events. We don't need to change much in our behaviour to be good stewards so it is just basic risk management. 

 miamizsun wrote:
+1

 miamizsun wrote:

But you may have time for this:
Why more scientists are pushing back on doomsday climate predictions

i'm not a climate scientist
however, i believe with fairly solid evidence that if the sun were to cease the earth, including the climate would be much colder
i also read that greenhouse gases in our atmoshere prevent "the mystery heat" from radiating back out into space
of course i didn't read the link provided below or much of this thread
"ain't nobody got time for that"

Just a thought,  if global warming were mainly driven by the sun, wouldn't the correct response be to double down on all efforts to REDUCE human-induced climate forcing?

Otherwise we are just making a bad situation worse. Kind of like not slowing down the Titanic.

 R_P wrote: It was pushing 90 here today... very sunny.

 KurtfromLaQuinta wrote:
Willie Soon is not a climate scientist, and the sun is not causing global warming.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/20...

direct link