Bioterrorism Threat Reappears

We underestimated the damage associated with temperature increases, and we underestimated the probability of temperature increases' --Nick Stern on his own 2006 report on the economics of global warming

'There is no linear predictability in terms of how ecosystems respond. The phenomena of collapse is one that we have under-appreciated, partly because of the feed-back mechanisms that we are still trying to understand.' --Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme, Oct. '07

'Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming' --Leemans and Eickhout (2004), 'Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,' Global Environmental Change 14, 219������228

"Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them." --Dr James Lovelock's lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. '07

Current climate models don't take into consideration melting methane hydrate emissions, which will soon overwhelm any cuts we make:

For instance, there is an area six times the size of Germany containing about 540 billion tons of carbon off the Siberian coast. That submarine permafrost is perilously close to thawing. Three to 12 kilometers from the coast the sea sediment is just below freezing. The permafrost has grown porous, there is a loss of rigor in the frozen sea floor, and the surrounding seawater is highly oversaturated with solute methane.

"If the Siberian (submarine) permafrost-seal thaws completely and all the stored gas escapes, the methane content of the planet's atmosphere would increase twelve fold. The result would be catastrophic global warming." --"A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia," Spiegel, 17 April '08

Furthermore, any carbon diet strategy would be dependent upon clean coal:

"The vast majority of new power stations in China and India will be coal-fired; not "may be coal-fired"; will be. So developing carbon capture and storage technology is not optional, it is literally of the essence." --"Breaking the Climate Deadlock," Tony Blair, June 26, 2008

But, Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, has estimated that capturing and burying just 10 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted over a year from coal-fire plants at current rates would require moving volumes of compressed carbon dioxide greater than the total annual flow of oil worldwide -- a massive undertaking requiring decades and trillions of dollars. "Beware of the scale," he stressed."

"The alternative (to geoengineering) is the acceptance of a massive natural cull of humanity and a return to an Earth that freely regulates itself but in the hot state." --Dr James Lovelock, August 2008

"Nuclear blindness is the mistaken belief that the bigger the bang, the more powerful the weapon. A highly contagious construct virus is a bomb that keeps exploding through the population at a geometric rate." --Brad Arnold, author of this posting

Richard Danzig, a former Navy secretary and now a biowarfare consultant to the Pentagon, said that while there are 1,000 to 10,000 "weaponeers" worldwide with experience working on biological arms, there are more than 1 million and perhaps many millions of "broadly skilled" scientists who, while lacking training in that narrow field, could construct bioweapons. "It seems likely that, over a period between a few months and a few years, broadly skilled individuals equipped with modest laboratory equipment can develop biological weapons," Danzig said. "Only a thin wall of terrorist ignorance and inexperience now protects us." --Washington Post, December 29, 2004

"The main thing that stands between the human species and the creation of a supervirus is a sense of responsibility among individual biologists." -The Demon in the Freeze, page 227

"The National Intelligence Council, the CIA's in-house think tank, warned in a report (Mapping the Global Future) that terrorists were more likely to obtain and use pathogens and pestilence than nuclear weapons to cause mass casualties in the next 15 years. The council based its assessment on dramatic advances in genetic research and biotechnology, the availability of scientific information and supplies on the Internet, and the emergence of sophisticated terrorist "groups, cells and individuals" who may be "particularly suited" to brewing lethal germs at home. "Indeed, the bioterrorist's laboratory could well be the size of a household kitchen, and the weapon built there could be smaller than a toaster," the council wrote. "Terrorist use of biological agents is therefore likely, and the range of options will grow."" --Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2005

"In truth, it is possible to imagine a malicious use for virtually any biological research or production site. The difference between a lab for producing lifesaving vaccines and one capable of making deadly toxins is largely one of intent." -"Terrorism and the Biology Lab" by Henry C. Kelly, New York Times, July 2, 2003