When I read the article the word "sobering" isn't the one that popped into my head. 
"Silly" I think is the more appropriate term.

First  - The authors of Pentagon report (referred to in the Forbes article) Peter 
Schwartz and Doug Randall are not "Pentagon planners" and they are not with the 
Pentagon, they are from the Global Business Network. I have seen nothing that links 
these two authors or the GBN officially to the Pentagon or the Defense Department. The 
GBN  web site does not say that they were hired by the Pentagon to do this report. 
Apparently (I could find no data, so somebody correct me if I am wrong) this is a report 
created by the GBN that they just delivered up to the Pentagon.

Secondly - read the Pentagon report to which the article refers.
The IPC server won't let me attach the Pentagon report (if anyone wants a copy of the 
report send me a separate email and I can forward it to you) but note that the report 
starts out with

"Imagining the Unthinkable

The purpose of this report is to imagine the unthinkable – to push the boundaries of 
current research on climate change so we may better understand the potential 
implications on United States national security.

We have interviewed leading climate change scientists, conducted additional research, 
and reviewed several iterations of the scenario with these experts. The scientists 
support this project, but caution that the scenario depicted is extreme in two 
fundamental ways.  First, they suggest the occurrences we outline would most likely 
happen in a few regions, rather than on globally.  Second, they say the magnitude of the 
event may be considerably smaller.

We have created a climate change scenario that although not the most likely, is 
plausible, and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be 
considered immediately."

The "Pentagon" report also states "In this report, as an alternative to the scenarios of 
gradual climatic warming that are so common, we outline an abrupt climate change 
scenario patterned after the 100-year event that occurred about 8,200 years ago."

Not quite what the article implies. In addition, I can't say that the "Pentagon" report 
is larded with bad science, because it doesn't even pretend to be scientific. It creates 
a series of climate scenarios and then imagines the national security implications of 
those scenarios. It is not climate science it is merely a war game "what if" exercise. 
And the authors of the report are not climate scientists.

Third: The Forbes article itself is so full of "mays"(6 times) and "coulds" and "woulds 
(3 times) and "probably"s as to be taken as just more schlock journalism (Yes, even 
Forbes mag.)

Then there is "
Picture last fall's California wildfires ...

Or imagine similar disasters ....."  Yeah, let's imagine, that's real good science.

But what really takes the cake is "Hollywood has also discovered the issue—next summer 
20th Century Fox is expected to release The Day After Tomorrow, a big-budget disaster 
movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to save the world from an ice age 
precipitated by global warming. Fox's flick will doubtless be apocalyptically edifying."

Well, if Hollywood has discovered it I guess that ends all debate on the subject matter.

Chuck Dolci

Steve Gregory wrote:
> Hmmmm, I was able to view the page. So
> I pasted it below for those that might get the same
> result from the link...
> 
> -Steve Gregory-
> 
> CLIMATE COLLAPSE
> The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
> The climate could change radically, and fast.
> That would be the mother of all national security issues.
> By David Stipp 
> 
> Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it, 
> most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda before 
> 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk may hit 
> home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the prospect has become 
> so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are grappling with it.
> 
> The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather 
> than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate to 
> a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system that 
> controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in less than a 
> decade—like a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it flips over. 
> Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical threshold. But abrupt 
> climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant future. If it does, the 
> need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many societies—thereby upsetting the 
> geopolitical balance of power.
> 
> Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the 
> Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. 
> and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust 
> bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular 
> thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as 
> Pakistan or Russia—it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in 
> abrupt climate change.
> 
> Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade ago, 
> after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of Arctic 
> ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average temperature took 
> place in the past with shocking speed—in some cases, just a few years. The case 
> for angst was buttressed by a theory regarded as the most likely explanation 
> for the abrupt changes.
> 
> The eastern U.S. and northern Europe, it seems, are warmed by a huge Atlantic 
> Ocean current that flows north from the tropics—that's why Britain, at 
> Labrador's latitude, is relatively temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air, this 
> "great conveyor" current gets cooler and denser as it moves north. That causes the 
> current to sink in the North Atlantic, where it heads south again in the 
> ocean depths. The sinking process draws more water from the south, keeping the 
> roughly circular current on the go. But when the climate warms, according to the 
> theory, fresh water from melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North 
> Atlantic, lowering the current's salinity—and its density and tendency to sink.
> 
> A warmer climate also increases rainfall and runoff into the current, further 
> lowering its saltiness. As a result, the conveyor loses its main motive force 
> and can rapidly collapse, turning off the huge heat pump and altering the 
> climate over much of the Northern Hemisphere. Scientists aren't sure what caused 
> the warming that triggered such collapses in the remote past. (Clearly it 
> wasn't humans and their factories.) But the data from Arctic ice and other sources 
> suggest the atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses were 
> dismayingly similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age began drawing to a close 
> about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in Greenland rose to levels 
> near those of recent decades.
> 
> Then they abruptly plunged as the conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in 
> the "Younger Dryas" period, a 1,300-year reversion to ice-age conditions. (A 
> dryas is an Arctic flower that flourished in Europe at the time.) Though Mother 
> Nature caused past abrupt climate changes, the one that may be shaping up 
> today probably has more to do with us. In 2001 an international panel of climate 
> experts concluded that there is increasingly strong evidence that most of the 
> global warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human 
> activities—mainly the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, which release 
> heat-trapping carbon dioxide. Indicators of the warming include shrinking Arctic 
> ice, melting alpine glaciers, and markedly earlier springs at northerly 
> latitudes.
> 
> A few years ago such changes seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or 
> grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm that may not conveniently 
> wait until we're history. Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is 
> shifting from gradual to rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences 
> issued a report concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. 
> Last year the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session 
> at which Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 
> in Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible 
> abrupt climate change within two decades. Such jeremiads are beginning to 
> reverberate more widely. 
> 
> Billionaire Gary Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted abrupt climate 
> change as a philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also discovered the issue—next 
> summer 20th Century Fox is expected to release The Day After Tomorrow, a 
> big-budget disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to save the 
> world from an ice age precipitated by global warming. Fox's flick will doubtless 
> be apocalyptically edifying. But what would abrupt climate change really be 
> like?   
>     
>     
>