U.S. intelligence agencies predict climate change will worsen world problems
Last update: June 25, 2008 - 8:39 PM

WASHINGTON - Global warming is likely to have a series of destabilizing effects around the world, causing humanitarian crises as well as surges in ethnic violence and illegal immigration, according to an assessment released Wednesday by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The report warned that rising temperatures could weaken already fragile regimes around the world and create a new set of national security challenges for the United States over the next two decades.

"Climate change alone is unlikely to trigger state failure" during that time frame, said Thomas Fingar, deputy director for National Intelligence, in remarks prepared for a joint congressional hearing. "But the impacts will worsen existing problems -- such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions."

Overall, as many as 50 million additional people could be at risk of hunger by 2020, and as many as 1.2 billion people could have "water stress."

The report represents the U.S. intelligence community's most comprehensive assessment to date of the long-term security consequences of global warming. It also marks a reluctant foray into a politically charged topic.

The document was praised by Democrats and environmental activists as a formal acknowledgement by a key part of the government that the threat of rising temperatures is real.

But the report was criticized by skeptics of global warming and opponents of using U.S. intelligence resources to track something as amorphous as the environment.

LOS ANGELES TIMES
http://www.startribune.com/world/216128 ... tModules:6