U.S. government spiked climate change study 30 years ago
September 8th, 2008 by Jim JustThe U.K. Times Online has published a bombshell. The U.S. government knew about climate change thirty years ago. “Morning in America” politics swept it under the rug and spawned climate change skepticism.
In 1979 a secret US Department of Defense-sponsored organization of American scientists code named “Jason” produced a report coded JSR-78-07 and entitled The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate.
The report predicted that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would double from their preindustrial levels by about 2035. Today it’s expected this will happen by about 2050. They suggested that this doubling of carbon dioxide would lead to an average warming across the planet of 2-3C. Again, that’s smack in the middle of today’s predictions. They warned that polar regions would warm by much more than the average, perhaps by as much as 10C or 12C. That prediction is already coming true – last year the Arctic sea ice melted to a new record low and this year may well set another record.
The Jasons drew ominous conclusions for civilization: “the fragility of the world’s crop-producing capacity, particularly in those marginal areas where small alterations in temperature and precipitation can bring about major changes in total productivity”.
The Jason report was never officially released but was read at the highest levels of the US government.
So by the late 1970s scientists and the U.S. government already knew what rising carbon dioxide levels would mean for the future.
Then Reagan was elected and climate change skepticism became official policy. Global warming became a distant problem for another day.