The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

So begins the excellent lead story by John Broder in today’s NY Times.   This  won’t surprise regular readers — indeed, last September I wrote about an unusually savvy new intelligence forecast on global risks “previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community’s top analyst” which

… envisions a steady decline in U.S. dominance in the coming decades, as the world is reshaped by globalization, battered by climate change, and destabilized by regional upheavals over shortages of food, water and energy.

The report … also concludes that one key area of continued U.S. superiority “” military power “” will “be the least significant” asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because “nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force.”

Thank you George Bush and Dick Cheney and your fellow deniers for delaying action so long has to make such an outcome all but inevitable!

The photo above is from Darfur.  The NYT notes, “The conflict in southern Sudan, which has killed and displaced tens of thousands of people, is partly a result of drought in Darfur.”   A 2007 Atlantic Monthly piece, “The Real Roots of Darfur,” went further, asserting, “The violence in Darfur is usually attributed to ethnic hatred. But global warming may be primarily to blame.”

And we haven’t even warmed 1°C yet!  We’re facing more than five times as much warming the century as the last century on our current emissions path.  How much conflict and misery will be caused when we have turned one third of the Earth’s inhabited land mass into a Dust Bowl and sea levels are more than a meter higher and the oceans are increasingly hot, acidified dead zone, which is what the second half of the century holds in store when we blow past 550 ppm on route to 850 to 1000 ppm or more?

The NYT offers this grim scenario:

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One of the revolving ads at the top of the homepage of one of the leading purveyors of disinformation on global warming, the Drudge Report:

Self-described conservative “humor” — with a lengthy definition of “humor” at the top of the t-shirt website just in case for some reason you didn’t get that this was humorous!

Seriously, torturing people is just so damn funny.   Stop it, you’re killing me.

This Think Progress post is a scary sequel to Memo to enviros, progressives: The deniers and dirty energy bunch are “full of passionate intensity” “” and eating our lunch on the climate bill!

The coal industry lobbying outfit the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is pressing forward with an aggressive astroturfing campaign going after U.S. senators “” despite the recent revelation that it was responsible for forged “grassroots” letters to lawmakers, attacking the American Clean Energy and Security Act:

Paid staff will both call people already on the group’s list and talk to other people at public events, asking them if they want information or T-shirts or would be interested in asking a question at a town hall meeting. “This is the purest form of grassroots,” Lucas said. “It’s facilitating constituents to talk one-on-one with members of Congress.

The new project will use 225,000 volunteers dubbed “America’s Power Army.” They will visit town hall meetings, fairs and other functions attended by members of Congress and ask misleading questions about energy policy.

ThinkProgress has discovered that ACCCE has subcontracted its astroturf operations to the Lincoln Strategy Group, a GOP-tied firm notorious for voter fraud. The LinkedIn profile for Lincoln Strategies staffer Courtney Forrester reveals that her employer is engaged in a massive effort to recruit supporters on behalf of the coal industry. Steve Gates, communications director for ACCCE, told ThinkProgress that Lincoln Strategy Group ran their grassroots campaign last year as well.

The new firm managing the “grassroots” campaign for the coal industry has a history that distinguishes it as being one of the most notorious voter fraud organizations in the country:

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