Guest relaying of good news by David Middleton
It seems like climate apocalypses are experiencing a bit of an apocalypse…
Nolte: Department of Defense Predicted Climate Change Would Destroy Us by 2020
by JOHN NOLTE 3 Jan 2020
Back in 2004, the Department of Defense released a report assuring the world Climate Change would destroy all of us by the year 2020.
Well, welcome to the year 2020! And welcome to yet another fake doomsday prediction number 42 from our renowned climate experts!
Yep, our so-called “climate experts” are now 0-42 with their doomsday predictions, and this latest one is a doozy.
[…]
Breitbart
Mr. Nolte then summarized this 2004 Grauniad article about the 2020 climate apocalypse…
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
And that’s not the worst of it. Get a load of this:
‘Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,‘ concludes the Pentagon analysis. ‘Once again, warfare would define human life.’
…
Climate change ‘should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern’, say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.
An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is ‘plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately’, they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions
Breitbart excerpt of Grauniad article
Here are some “highlights” from the actual DOD report:
The report reads like the script for The Day After Tomorrow, which was also released in 2004.
It even has a very funny typo…
Why is it that the climate catastrophists never talk or write about the Bølling-Allerød interstadial (BA)? It’s the most anomalous feature on the temperature chart above. The BA is associated with a sharp rise in atmospheric CO2 (25-35 ppm in ice cores, >100 ppm in some plant stomata chronologies) and a genuine sea level rise acceleration, reaching rates of 40-60 mm/yr during Meltwater Pulse 1A.
The authors of the DOD report were futurist Peter Schwartz, who literally has a degree in rocket science, and Doug Randall, who worked for Schwartz at Global Business Network. Doug has an MBA and teaches yoga. It’s unclear as to whether or not they based this report on The Day After Tomorrow, or if Roland Emmerich based the screenplay for his American scientific film on the DOD report. Although it is possible that both works were based on Art “Coast to Coast“ Bell’s climatology textbook…
I was going to write that you couldn’t make this sort of schist up, if you tried… But people did.
Addendum
Larry Kummer also addressed the Grauniad article and DOD report in this post.
One of these day, surely they will get a prediction right.
Versailles
I suppose that if you have an infinite number of monkeys pounding on keyboards, at least one of them will get a correct prediction. However, how would you know it was right before a century has passed?
No, because the goal of the Deep State is to foster an attitude where global domination is required to keep us all “safe” and they can do that only after they’ve placed everybody under their political control. Once accomplished, they simply let nature run its course with the climate because it wasn’t screwed up in the first place!
See how completely gullible we are? It’s embarrassing!
Anyone associated with that garbage still has a public services job, they should be sacked immediately.
Surely you mean promoted?
They were consultants. Basically, they write what you tell them to write & then you say it must be believed because these highly paid consultants said so.
From the cover of The Coming Global Superstorm :
We have a probation officer in the family and he’s rather good at deflating teenage bull crap. He would refer to the above statement as a mischaracterization. Global warming is all about mischaracterizing natural phenomena.
The whole problem of CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) is to discern whether weather phenomena are natural or not. Even the IPCC admits that extreme weather is not getting worse (but just you wait). And yet we’re treated to the constant drum beat of stories that things that have repeatedly happened in human history are evidence that things are getting worse. That’s in the face of the fact that those things are happening no more frequently.
There is one great truism in the climate debate, and that is that EVERY prediction by climate scientists has been wrong. But therein lies a problem – because if your models and predictions are wrong, then your theory is probably wrong too.
Evidence for this may reside in the data for Downwelling Longwave Radiation (DLR), which is the very foundation upon which the extra greenhouse warming theory sits. For increased greenhouse warming to be true then DLR must also be increasing – but I have never seen any evidence for an increase in DLR.
Anyone have any evidence for an increase in DLR?
Ralph
The technology exists to measure DLR yet has not been placed around the world to measure it. At least I’ve never seen any. There are a couple examples. Gero/Turner 2011 measured it and found no increase. Also measured in a couple of places in Australia and again no increase.
https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2019/01/15/another-inconvenient-pause/
Why would a science that claims increases in the GHE will warm the planet have no network in place to measure it?
Richard M: I guess it’s the same type of reasoning that lets the scientists look at their model predictions versus measured (UAH) data and continue the “10-years before death” meme…
Data, we doan need no stinkin’ data.
If we had data, then you’d want to examine it so you could find something wrong.
And, since there would be a serious lack of coverage, it would have to be infilled and homogenized.
Ralph
This new CERES research just out appears to show the solar energy balance at top of atmosphere to have turned negative since the turn of the millennium, along with OHC:
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/6/663/htm
Here is a quote from Doug Randall’s self-curated list of accomplishments:
“Protagonist is the leader in Narrative Analytics, which uses machine learning and natural language processing to analyze and influence public discourse”
When the revolution comes, LinkedIn will be an invaluable resource to find tools just like Randall.
“LinkedIn will be an invaluable resource to find tools just like Randall.”Randall’s a tool ? Who would have thought?
JF
I wonder which “leading climate change scientists” they interviewed. Any guesses?
Any football team with a record of 0-42 would be not only looking for a new coach but would be replacing every player.
Check out Fort William of the Scottish Highland League, 5th tier of Scottish football.
Wikipedia
Five games into the 2018-19 season and still pointless, the club was deducted nine points by the Highland League after fielding an ineligible player on three occasions.[14] They finished the season with no wins and two draws from their 34 games, ending on -7 points.[15] This led to them being dubbed “The worst football team in Britain”.
Having 3 wins and 7 draws (ties) in the previous two seasons and have one win in 12 games this season.
Probably a better record than any climate scientist.
Blindfolded monkeys throwing darts at a board would have a better record than alarmists.
The original report makes it clear that this is a worst-case hypothesis for discussion purposes. It was the Observer which hyped it into a secret Pentagon report suppressed by the government. The Observer is (or was – is it still going?) the Sunday Guardian.
It’s not even the worst case hypothesis any longer.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/03/models-confirm-the-day-after-tomorrow-was-bad-science-fiction/
Nor were the 8.2 ky Cooling Event or the Younger Dryas Interstadial ever potential analogues for Late Holocene climate change. It was taxpayer-funded bad science fiction.
Furthermore, the apocalyptic report was hyped by many media outlets.
https://grist.org/article/pentagoners/
https://monthlyreview.org/2004/05/01/the-pentagon-and-climate-change/
https://fortune.com/2014/01/12/the-pentagons-weather-nightmare-fortune-2004/
https://www.iatp.org/news/leaked-pentagon-report-warns-climate-change-may-bring-famine-war-0
As an aside – the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) is a POLITICAL – NOT scientific – organisation set up by the UN specifically to PROVE man-made climate change…
Think about that for a minute. Say you were employed as – I dunno – a truck driver. You wouldn’t sit in the depot drinking coffee – you’d drive trucks, right..?
So – surprise, surprise – having been set up to PROVE man-made global warming – the IPCC did exactly that…
David: “[…] having been set up to PROVE man-made global warming – the IPCC did exactly that…”
Whoa! The jury is still out. Locally and regionally, man-made warming due to UHI and land use changes is pretty much undisputed, but global warming due to recent additions of CO2 due to fossil fuel use is still debatable.
The graph from the DoD report, Creating The Scenario: Reviewing History, and reproduced above gives rise to legitimate questions as to why it was warmer in the past with lower levels of CO2 and shows those still unexplained excursions into cold periods.
“The Science says” that CO2 should have some effect, but the long-term reconstructions I’ve seen don’t seem to show CO2 as the global temperature control it is being made out to be.
The IPCC has indicted a culprit, but is still looking for evidence of a crime.
Good report, David. As a former Army guy and current fanatic golfer I can comment readily on either. The requirement for a good golfer is 50% athletic, 50% mental, and 50% really good at math. Golf Digest ™ in their May, 2002, magazine, published “The most important article we’ve ever published”, which was “How Green is Golf?” by John Barton. The report included the part “Global Warming: our coast is under attack, wherein it stated that unless we change our ways 645 coastal golf courses in the USA would be unplayable due to rising sea level, based on a predicted 6-meter rise in sea level by 2100. Current score for loss of coastal golf courses due to rising sea level: zero (0). Yogi Berra had it right when it comes to predictions.
Yogi also had this one…
http://quoteparrot.com/images/quote/baseball-is-90-percent-mental-and-the-other-half-is-physical-34620.jpg
Gotta love Yogi!
I saw a clip on tv of New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen (who recently passed away) when he pitched the only perfect game in World Series history, and there was ole Number 8, Catcher Yogi Berra, jumping up on Larsen at the mound after the game was won, and wrapping both his arms and legs around Larsen. I believe I saw that game live on tv but can’t be sure because I was pretty young at the time, but I’ve certainly seen that scene numerous times in my life.
God Bless them all.
“When it was a game”… priceless.
Who the heck is predicting 6 meters of SLR by 2100?
MarkW, in the cited article above, p. 207, is cited: “A National Science Foundation-funded study two years ago predicted that if warming continues at the current pace, a six-meter rise in sea level by 2020 is possible.” There you have it, NST using tax-payer money to support total nonsense.
Oops! Too much 2020 on my mind, it is “by 2100”.
MD2020?
Is someone keeping print copies of these things? Hope so. They make for good reading.
I have my own prediction: In 324.5 years (from now), the sun will be rising at or about 5:45AM in the northern hemisphere, and snow will have fallen in mass quantities, causing people to grumble more than ever about the shovels at the hardware stores, and how inadequate they are. Rain will fall in abundance in the summer, and those 14 billion species of critters in Australia that the local news reported last night as extinct, due to the brush fires, will have come crawling out of their hidey holes and taken over all the abandoned land which will be swamped by rain. Snow will start early and stay late, and geese will migrate north, interfering with road travel.
Anyone else got better ideas? Willing to listen, just send a check to me, and I’ll give you a 15 minute shot of my precious time.
You are calling for heavy northern hemisphere snow in July?
Reading the excerpts presented here, it is clear that Middleton has grossly misrepresented the work by date defense analysts. They clearly did NOT predict massive catastrophic climate change by 2020. Their task was to analyze the geopolitical effects IF a catastrophic sudden climate change, such as has happened before, were to begin at the time the analysis was prepared in 2020. The analysts took no position as to the imminent timing of such an event.
This is typical “wargaming” analysis that begins with a “what if?” premise and then attempts to game out the consequences and postulate potential mitigation actions that the nation could prepare to employ.
Really – stick to science and leave out the silly polemics and attempts to misrepresent what others have actually said or done. This analysis is NOT no. 42 of 42 bad predictions.
And learn to both read and comprehend at the same time.
Horst schist. I accurately conveyed the content and context of a Breitbart article, a Grauniad article and the report itself. Learn how to read.
Duane
You said, “They clearly did NOT predict massive catastrophic climate change by 2020.”
From the Executive Summary, first sentence: “There is substantial evidence to indicate that significant global warming will occur during the 21st century.”
They then present what they characterize to be a highly probable scenario, which includes the collapse of the thermohaline circulation during the 2010-2020 time frame. They contrast this with the southern hemisphere, about which they remark, “There is considerable uncertainty about the climate dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere, …”, implying that they think the thermohaline circulation collapse is indeed highly probable.
They then address the consequences of what they consider to be a highly probable global scenario.
I think that you should take your own advice to heart: “… learn to both read and comprehend at the same time.”
Even worse… They never put forward a scenario laying out the conditions that led to a thermohaline collapse. They just claimed that it was a plausible outcome of currently evolving conditions.
Have these people never got their heads round the fundamental significance of the phrase “as they did when …”?
And if “they did then” without any assistance from humanity or fossil fuel “emissions” why should anyone assume that “they cannot do” exactly the same today or next week and that there is damn all we can do about just as there was damn all we could have done about it then?
The DoD was “forced” by Congress to address climate change and how the DoD would respond to it. As such the DoD was forced to produce material that had nothing to do with military action (their sole job) but accommodated certain members of Congress.
Personally I would’ve sent Congress a one sentence response on DoD letterhead of – “The DoD will deal with climate change the same way we deal with weather.”
-sigh-
Not DOD, not a climate prediction, not unreasonable… when you realize the purpose of the paper.
https://bearbussjaeger.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/breitbart-bullshit-on-climate-prediction/
Nothing is more entertaining than a smug -sigh- from a clueless commentator.
The report was written for the Department of Defense.
https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a469325.pdf
“.mil” is the Department of Defense’s Internet Domain Name System. See my reply to Steve Mosher to see why everything else you blogged about is wrong.
You’re looking at a hosting URL. I’m looking at the contents of the paper.
“7. PERFORMING ORGANIZATION NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA”
“9. SPONSORING/MONITORING AGENCY NAME(S) AND ADDRESS(ES)”
(blank)
The only mention of the DOD is a page 17 prediction.
The report was prepared for DOD. The report is stored on the DOD web domain.
By your reasoning, based on hosting, you could assert that it is a Columbia University “prediction,” or the state of Indiana, Brigham Young University, GPO, or oilcrisis.com, since it is also hosted on those sites.
I didn’t assert that it was anyone’s prediction. The Observer/Grauniad and Breitbart articles asserted that it was a DOD prediction.
I simply relayed the good news that it had failed to come true and then noted that the report read like the script for a bad science fiction movie.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/day-yesterday-when-abrupt-climate-change-came-chesapeake-bay
Glimate.gov links to oai.dtic.mil
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA469325
OAI = oceanographic area of interest
DTIC…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Technical_Information_Center
It’s not a prediction. It’s a scenario. Huge difference.
simple example. In DoD planning you have folks make up scenarios.
Scenarios are POSSIBLE futures. What’s that mean? well a future in which 2+2=5, is not possible.
Scenarios are basically POSSIBLE futures that don’t break any laws of logic.
Probabilities are not assigned to scenarios.
The scenario we worked under was two front war. One in fulda gup the other in Korea.
Worst case scenarios are created as GIVENS for other analysis.
So GIVEN a scenario of a two front war, we had to predict what would happen if we
changed designs in this way or that way.
These authors were commissioned to do a SCENARIO.
not predictions
“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. ”
…..is plausible
https://pittnews.com/article/66601/opinions/dont-let-fear-undermine-environmental-threats/
Some folks thought climate change was a national security concern. Didn’t Obama or one of his flunkies say something to that effect?
There’s nothing plausible about their worst case outcome, nor did they present a scenario by which the conditions for that outcome were established.
Didn’t they used to call them “story lines”?
That was before the RCP scenarios were adopted.
Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle.
Funny how predictions magically become “scenarios” when they faim to come true.
+1 for semantics. I would not have called it a prediction, had I been writing a post specifically about their bad science fiction script. This post is primarily about the Breitbart and Grauniad articles, both of which called it a prediction.
You would be correct if the authors actually constructed a scenario. Scenarios form the framework for predictions, which generally take the form of a probability distribution.
The RCP scenarios each lay out a set of evolving conditions. The various CMIP vmodels produce a range of possible outcomes from those conditions.
The futurists didn’t generate a scenario. They simply put forward an impossible outcome to conditions as they were currently evolving. Their “Day After Tomorrow” outcome began to evolve in 2010, 7 years after they wrote the bad science fiction. They were projecting what they called a plausible scenario.
Page 5
They actually misspelled “experience” in the report. They didn’t portray a “plausible scenario” or even a scenario. They never established a scenario which could lead to this outcome…
Page 7
No competent scientists would consider this to be plausible…
Page 9
Wally Broecker had even walked back the notion of a thermohaline collapse in his chapter in AAPG’s Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change (2001)… And he was the originator of this hypothesis.
At no point do they lay out a scenario that leads to what they call a plausible outcome.
Page 22
Apart from some arm-waving about the 8.2 ky Cooling Event and the Younger Dryas, they provide no scenario which leads to their worst case outcome. Neither of these events are even remotely analogous to the Late Holocene. At the time of the 8.2 ky cooling event, the Laurentide ice sheet still covered most of Labrador and Quebec and there was a string of ice-dammed lakes along the glacial front from Manitoba to Montreal.
Short of Doctor Evil using a space “laser” to quickly and totally melt the Greenland ice sheet, there is no scenario that could replicate 8.2 ky Cooling Event, assuming that it was caused by a meltwater-induced thermohaline disruption.
Mosher
You said, “Probabilities are not assigned to scenarios.” Yet, the authors said,
The research suggests that once temperature rises above some threshold, adverse weather conditions could develop relatively abruptly, with persistent changes in the atmospheric circulation causing drops in some regions of 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit in a single decade.
The way they worded it, it sounds to me like an implied high probability, albeit without any numbers assigned.
There’s still time, 2020 is over yet.
“by 2020” has already occurred.
Happy New Year.
Clearly, DoD must have been staffed by demagogues and charlatans in 2004. There’s no good reason to believe they’re gone by now.
Ok. I once was tasked to write a future scenario for a large company. The methodology I used was this:
Three scenarios, based on the three most likely set of events over the next ten years:
One based on no technological, regulatory, or environmental changes. The status quo.
The second, changes in those areas that would be favorable, driving the company in a positive direction.
The third, changes in those areas negative for the company, pushing into a defensive position.
In each of those scenarios were specific developments, i.e., markers with timetables, to watch which would indicate if that scenario was becoming reality or not. That was vital if the study were to have any value.
There was also a warning that said the future could easily be a combination of the three, and there were recommendations on what policies should be pursued for each scenario. By watching the markers, you would get a good understanding of what was happening, the future impact, and what policies to initiate.
I am pleased to say my second scenario played out exactly. Each marker fell into place eactly when predicted. I do not know if the study had any impact – it was a large company; there were many studies. It did follow the recommended actions in my study, but others could have made the same determinations.
The point is, done correctly, predictive studies can be useful. The study in this article did not provide anything useful. There were no markers with timetables. There is only one scenario. There are no recommendations of what to do and when. Had it been done properly, the markers indicating the unfolding of the scenario they provided would have failed to materialize. The scenario would have been discarded in favor of others, one of which should have been a status quo future wrt climate. I guess that highlights the difference between giving a bureaucracy what it wants, versus something of value to a company that must be profitable.
jtom,
I appreciate your description of a useful scenario document. Quite a contrast with the ignorant, and or corrupt, biased, incompetent communications now continuously recorded in print and video concerning Climate. And, thanks to David for preparing this expose’.
I understand that a remarkable, legendary physicist said something like: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Evidence means data. Computer models are not data. Selecting data to support a ruling theory is faulty science.
There is a massive propaganda apparatus at work and in addition to it’s impact upon the economy, infrastructure, capital allocation, lack of attention to real problems, it is hurting people psychologically, emotionally.
Right on Latitude, Mosher, ScienceABC, Newminster and others. The authors explicity said is was a reasonable scenario to oppose the commonly thought global warming “The purpose of this report is to imagine the unthinkable .” The climate abruptly cooled 8200 years ago. The effects were world wide and detectable everywhere.
The military wanted possibilities to supply to Congress and they got a good one.
A scenario would lay out the conditions leading to a range of plausible outcomes. Their worst case outcome was a result of currently evolving conditions. Their postulated thermohaline collapse began in 2010. They never generated a scenario for how this happened, apart from some arm waving about the 8.2 ky Cooling Event. They put forward an outcome, which they called plausible.
There was nothing plausible about it. It’s not even possible to recreate the conditions of the 8.2 ky cooling event in the Late Holocene. At the time of the 8.2 ky cooling event, the Laurentide ice sheet still covered most of Labrador and Quebec and there was a string of ice-dammed lakes along the glacial front from Manitoba to Montreal.
Short of Doctor Evil using a space “laser” to quickly and totally melt the Greenland ice sheet, there is no scenario that could replicate 8.2 ky Cooling Event, assuming that it was caused by a meltwater-induced thermohaline disruption.
The report was basically a role-playing scenario. Nowhere did it say that the events were likely to happen
Page 1
Nothing supported the claim “that there is a possibility that this gradual global warming could lead to a relatively abrupt slowing of the ocean’s thermohaline conveyor.” Climate predictions take the form of probability distributions, ranging from possible, to most likely, to near certainty. These ranges are the result of scenarios laying out the conditions that lead to the outcomes.
Page 1
Unmitigated horst schist. There are no analogies between the Younger Dryas or 8.2 ky Cooling Event and the Late Holocene.
Page 2
The gradual climatic warming is not a scenario. It is the predicted range of climate models, which are based on scenarios. They never laid out a scenario for the conditions leading to a thermohaline collapse. They simply claimed that such an outcome was plausible within a few years.
Page 3
No there weren’t, nor did they provide any examples of the indications.
Page 9
Wally Broecker had even walked back the notion of a thermohaline collapse in his chapter in AAPG’s Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change (2001)… And he was the originator of this hypothesis.
At no point do they lay out a scenario that leads to what they call a plausible outcome.
Page 22
Apart from some arm-waving about the 8.2 ky Cooling Event and the Younger Dryas, they provide no scenario which leads to their worst case outcome. Neither of these events are even remotely analogous to the Late Holocene. At the time of the 8.2 ky cooling event, the Laurentide ice sheet still covered most of Labrador and Quebec and there was a string of ice-dammed lakes along the glacial front from Manitoba to Montreal.
Short of Doctor Evil using a space “laser” to quickly and totally melt the Greenland ice sheet, there is no scenario that could replicate 8.2 ky Cooling Event, assuming that it was caused by a meltwater-induced thermohaline disruption.
Marcos
From the Executive Summary, first sentence: “There is substantial evidence to indicate that significant global warming will occur during the 21st century.”
Here’s an energy prediction from a 1973 NYTimes article that quoted an expert that saw the following scenario unfolding in the US:
“The day of Sunday, July 4, 1976, the 200th birthday of the United States of America, will dawn on a nation not in celebration but one that will be desperately trying to save itself from the crush of a collapsing, economy because of a shortage of energy.”
He envisions an unemployment rate of 22.6 per cent with some 31 million cars unable to move for lack of gasoline; 20 million homes without oil or gas and a million businesses, from manufacturing plants to barber shops, forced to close down.
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/17/archives/energy-crisis-shortages-amid-plenty.html
If one reads the article, you sense a lot of deja vu from the current climate crisis. Makes me wonder if the climate crisis was created in order to account for the energy crisis that never occurred.
The Pentagon needs money to fight climate change.
Therefore, the Pentagon will ensure that THERE WILL BE climate change (or, at least, all of the alleged consequences of climate change — i.e., “extreme weather events”).
You may ask if I can prove this; but the above statement IS the proof. If you see the “extreme weather events” at rates you haven’t seen before, you will have proof that the Pentagon is able to do what they’ve been working on (with all of the smartest people in the world and nearly infinite funding) for 70 years.
The Pentagon would be on board with creating panic over climate change because it would mean they get more money. No different than the so called scientists promoting fear mongering. It’s all about money.
They threw enough “could’s” in there to give them a way to weasel out of their dire predictions. Whenever I see a “could” without any valid probability range, I am reminded that “could not” is just as likely. In other words, “whatever!”