New climate study explores national security and social change

Fascinating new study out of the entitled "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change."

Using a scenario planning method, the study explores what's "plausible" as it relates to climate change as opposed to what can be established with scientific certainty.

For each of the three plausible climate scenarios, we asked a national security expert to consider the projected environmental effects of global warming and map out the possible consequences for peace and stability. Further, we enlisted a historian of science to consider whether there was anything to learn from the experience of earlier civilizations confronted with rampant disease, flooding, or other forms of natural disaster.

Real Climate has a much better breakdown, so I'm just sending you there. The potential outcomes are downright catastrophic (on practically a biblical scale):

The “expected” scenario calls for 1.3 °C of warming globally, by the year 2040. Changes in precipitation and sea level prompt migration at a scale sufficient to challenge the cohesion of nations...

...In the “severe” scenario, the globe warms by 2.6 °C by 2040 and sea level rises about a half a meter. Scientists in 2040 conclude that the eventual collapse of Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheets has become inevitable in the centuries that follow. Agricultural production declines in the arid subtropics and in increasingly flooded river deltas. Again to pick a random example from the report: the river systems in the American Southwest collapse, leading to impoverishment of Northern Mexico and increased migration pressure in the U.S. Resource stress in Latin American leads to a tendency toward populist, Chavez-type governments, and more extensive regions of de facto anarchy such as found today in parts of Colombia.

I won't even bother posting the "catastrophic scenario" as I'm sure you get the hint. A compelling study and read.