[HN Gopher] UK intelligence censored report on global warming an...
___________________________________________________________________
UK intelligence censored report on global warming and homeland
security
Author : ewidar
Score : 68 points
Date : 2026-04-05 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theoryofchange1.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theoryofchange1.substack.com)
| lschueller wrote:
| The article makes the impression, that this security threats
| caused by climate change are somewhat new to gov bodies. As this
| is not true, the risks for political and societal stability and
| security have been very well researched in depth in the
| respective scientific disciplines since the Club of Rome firstly
| broad this topic to the larger public attention in 1972. But the
| contradicting forces are not long-term perspectives but short
| term gains on the political agenda, which makes it much harder to
| lobby for solutions against threats, which will happen "only" in
| 5 to 10 years in the future.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| That doesn't mean that efforts to suppress awareness and
| subsequently action against climate change isn't being done to
| this very day. Some of it is done by governments (such as
| mentioned here, or with the EPA dismantling in the US), some by
| hostile governments (e.g. Russia funding a lot of the Western
| far-right parties that all run on climate change denial), some
| by fossil fuel companies (e.g. BP creating the "CO2 footprint"
| to individualize responsibility), and the rest by utterly
| braindead clown individuals (we used to call them "village
| idiots") that, thanks to the Internet, now have a global
| audience.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Or are presidents!
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > or with the EPA dismantling in the US
|
| In the US I feel we have entered the stage beyond trying to
| suppress awareness. Not that the government is being honest
| about it, but they also aren't really trying to hide it.
| They've just moved to not directly talking about it, and
| since our mainstream media is fully captured nobody is
| pushing them to talk about it. We've moved from trying to
| downplay the impact to just announcing what we plan to do
| about it as the impacts continue to manifest into reality.
|
| We're going to continue down the path of fossil fuels (we
| have no intention of trying to lessen the severity at the
| cost of economic growth, number MUST GO UP) and we're going
| to attempt to take countries (Greenland, Canada) that
| "benefit" from the changes (at least in terms of having more
| livable/arable land). Migrants trying to enter the US to
| escape the catastrophes in their own countries will be thrown
| into concentration camps or worse. Large parts of the US will
| be impacted, of course, but those are sacrifices they're
| willing to make (and, hey... large scale displacement is good
| for the GDP!). Better double check your insurance policies.
|
| Almost all of Trump 2.0's actions to date make a sort of
| sociopathic sense if you assume the various groups pulling
| his strings have accepted that large impacts from severe
| climate change are coming soon and have just decided to YOLO
| it.
| secondcoming wrote:
| > If collapse happens, it notes the UK does not have the ability
| to absorb global shocks through higher domestic output. It lacks
| enough land to feed its population or rear livestock to maintain
| current consumption patterns and price levels.
|
| Yet they're pushing to use farmland for solar farms and social
| housing.
|
| There's a real hatred of farmers among the UK Leftist/Green
| crowd.
| defrost wrote:
| There's certainly a justified hatred of faux-farmers of
| convenience such as Clarkson et al.
|
| I suspect that's the hatred being mischaracterised and
| amplified by the GBNews Farrage crowd.
| secondcoming wrote:
| No. It's because farmers sometimes pollute rivers (despite
| household sewage being pumped into UK rivers daily), want to
| kill badgers to stop TB spreading, and because they work
| large areas of land they're obviously wealthy.
| defrost wrote:
| Sure, someone always believes such things, .. is that
| really widespread and a core belief of the "the UK
| Leftist/Green crowd." ?
|
| The constant observation made about the UK is there's
| always an excess amplification of what various groups are
| alleged to believe.
|
| Last I checked, the current King is in the "Leftist/Green"
| camp and pro-farmer. (by default, he'd be "UK" and not a
| "crowd" though).
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Is there any strong evidence that killing badgers reduces
| bovine TB?
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| To his credit Clarkson has done more form farming with his
| show than countryfile or the archers has done in decades.
|
| He bought it as a tax break, but I'd leave not ire for
| "farmers" like the musician and vacuum cleaner salesman.
|
| Nothing caused me to laugh more at the "woe is the
| millionaire march" than seeing Lloyd Webber and his dog out
| on the march.
| defrost wrote:
| > vacuum cleaner salesman.
|
| Dyson? Sure - he seems performative (from afar, I'm
| antipodean to this BTW) with his industrialised strawberry
| wheels etc.
|
| > the musician
|
| Lost me .. I'm sure the UK has a few gumbooted millionaire
| class rockers / composers - I'm guessing that's a throw at
| the impresario of musical theatre with a life peerage who
| is rarely seen cutting hay.
|
| I'm not sure I'd class either of those as farmers (by our
| local understanding), and Clarkson smacks of content farmer
| cos player more than generationally consistent production
| farmer .. but perhaps he might get there.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I don't think it's been possible to feed the UK domestically
| since before WW2.
|
| I note you put the word "social" in there; very little social
| housing is being built, it's mostly private. Agrivoltaics are
| also possible, but of course everyone would rather do the
| politics of emotions ("hate farmers") than discuss the issues.
| Such as how we grow enough electricity, too.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| > I don't think it's been possible to feed the UK
| domestically since before WW2.
|
| Of course you can, I know people being almost self
| sustainable right now on very little land. It is hard, frugal
| but highly rewarding and we have evolved to do it since very
| recently.
|
| Energy and heating is a bit more complicated. We obviously
| cannot burn wood or coal like we use to because this is
| actually very damaging to the planet. So this is where
| technology has to play a bigger role.
| vardalab wrote:
| Farming might feel rewarding while watching someone else do
| the hard work. I watched and had to help my grandparents do
| it and went through my own decade of "farming" and it never
| gets easier and you only get older.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| https://animal.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Eating-
| Awa...
|
| This covers moving the UK to self-sustain by reducing animal
| products and repurposing animal feed cropland to direct
| consumption cropland; it also covers reforestation.
|
| So while it isn't possible today, its possible to become
| possible without relying on any technological advancements.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| The farmers are the ones selling the land off and living off
| the million pound proceeds
|
| Farmland is worth PS100/acre/year, at most that's PS3k an acre.
| But people pay PS10k because it's a way to avoid tax and if you
| get the right planning permission a way of making millions.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| Farmland is ~69% of the total area of the UK with it being
| quite stable in the last decade, and most of that being
| grassland. Solar accounts for ~0.1% of (former) agricultural
| land, and after 2030 it should be around ~0.6%. The Land Use
| Framework aims for 1% of land (mainly agricultural, so ~1.5% of
| ag) for renewables by 2050. Housing doesn't have as comparable
| figures, but I'm envelope mathing it to about 1.5% by 2050
| again. Which makes 3% of ag land, of which crops are roughly
| 1/3rd, and google says 60% of solar is on good crop land. So a
| reduction of up to ~6% at the top end.
|
| There are a few flip-sides here - things that many don't like
| to hear or acknowledge:
|
| There are alternate diets that are suitably nutritious that are
| achievable on this land, largely by reducing meat consumption.
| Meat production uses much more land than other food sources,
| and a lot of that is input crops. Its inefficient. A change in
| diet can make the UK self-sufficient on much less land.
|
| Solar is a developing technology; it will improve, requiring
| less land for the same production. If long term trends push up
| the value of crops and down solar production, the panels can be
| removed and crops grown instead - its either/or but it is
| reversible. This is especially important for bringing in non-
| solar power sources which take longer to realise (nuclear,
| tidal). I will also note that solar farms are built on the good
| crop land because it is convenient and the price is right. We
| will see south facing hills covered soon enough.
|
| Housing and social housing are the same problem; where housing
| prices are so high compared to salaries, social housing demand
| increases. Building houses - any houses - solves the problem.
| The question of density, location, style is a question about
| what kind of problems we want in 10-20 years time. High rises
| did not work well at all.
| ben_w wrote:
| > > It lacks enough land to feed its population or rear
| livestock to maintain current consumption patterns and price
| levels.
|
| > Yet they're pushing to use farmland for solar farms and
| social housing.
|
| Cities, you may note, never ever make enough food to feed
| themselves. Always been true, everywhere and everywhen since
| the invention of the city.
|
| Farmers choosing between cash crops and food crops was
| literally a game the teachers got the kids to play when I was
| in school in the 90s. Cash crops, and PV is kinda a cash crop,
| let you make enough money to buy food. That said, how much
| money depends on what industry you have to use the power,
| because nobody else in the world will care for the PS if the UK
| employment consists entirely of baristas, hairdressers, and
| Amazon warehouse staff/delivery drivers.
|
| The biggest problem with using farmland for social housing is
| that a lot of the good farmland is a flood risk.
|
| But the only case where the UK has to care that it doesn't make
| enough to feed itself is if the economy becomes an autarky, at
| which point it cannot help but suffer a massive population
| reduction because it's a small island quite close to the arctic
| circle which has spent or depleted most of its natural
| resources, first the wood (1600s-1700s), then the coal (1930s
| or so), then the fish (1980s or so), then the natural gas
| (early 2000s).
| teamonkey wrote:
| There's no real hatred of farmers on the left, other than the
| fact that farmers generally vote small-c conservative.
|
| There's certainly a hatred of land owners, and vast amounts of
| UK farm land is privately owned, renting the land to farmers.
| It's the right wing parties and press that takes that to mean
| that the left hate farmers.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| Here is the solution nobody is talking about:
|
| The population of the UK or Europe did not explode in the last
| hundred years. It did not even double.
|
| The population used to be more rural and relatively self
| sufficient in terms of food. There is actually enough land in
| Europe to feed everybody, especially considering the great
| progress we made scientifically. You can actually sustain
| yourself on a few hundred square meters of land and you won't get
| fat and be healthier (in your body and mind).
|
| The great migration of the local population to the city to get a
| good factory or a bank job is over I believe. But the country
| side is still empty.
|
| The reason is it is hard to make the jump first and ending up in
| the middle of nowhere living with a few old people. Also your
| politicians hate independent people so they are not gonna
| encourage it. They would rather keep you in a constant guilty
| state about their vision of "climate change" while letting you
| board a 10 GBP Ryanair flight for a week-end city trip or order
| useless things on Temu.
|
| For Europe and many other places, the solution to a more
| sustainable future is actually quite straightforward.
| supliminal wrote:
| I think you're talking about subsistence farming, which plenty
| of places in Europe do practice. But it is hard work.
| defrost wrote:
| Subsistence farming would be farming to only feed the farmers
| with little excess left for trade, it's a little too keyhole
| in this context.
|
| They're talking more in the direction of EU scale closed loop
| / closed cycle agriculture, in which a network of farms
| across countries interop to exchange resources (pig and
| chicken waste, for fertilizer, for example) in order to
| reduce or eliminate outside inputs (synthetic fertilizers
| from the Gulf, for example), but still work to maximise
| production for EU consumption.
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Europe's big problem is the hindered of millions of climate
| refugees on the doorstep. Even the most open heart liberal will
| baulk at the population doubling or more in 20 years. The only
| ones promising a solution will be the neofeudalists
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| Why would an open heart liberal have any concern with
| welcoming refugees?
| kypro wrote:
| Depends where they're coming from I guess. There's
| basically no where on Earth where people are as liberal as
| Europe.
|
| No liberal would want millions of people coming from
| Afghanistan, for example.
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| Presumably you mean No _True_ Liberal.
| miningape wrote:
| Well, I have something to tell you about the last decade+
| of EU immigration policy
| hkpack wrote:
| [delayed]
| sunshine-o wrote:
| But Europe also have to stop believing they can solve the
| world problems and act on a global scale. This time is long
| gone, about at least a hundred year.
|
| Every region, culture will need to find a path to
| sustainability in their own way. If the path they take is
| invading another region, it leads to war. Like it has been
| for thousands of years.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| "Europe, you don't have global influence?" What _is_ this?
| Disconnect, splinter and prepare for war?
| sunshine-o wrote:
| > Disconnect, splinter and prepare for war?
|
| But this is what we are doing anyway...
|
| I am just trying to articulate a path where can have
| better food security and sustainability.
| wat10000 wrote:
| How is having a bunch of people move to the countryside going
| to make for a more sustainable future?
| kypro wrote:
| I think the fundamental problem is the conflict between
| climate, family and live-style vs corporate interest and
| economic growth.
|
| Ideally, we should want populations that are either not growing
| or slowly shrinking, but we can't have this because multi-
| national corporations don't want to invest in countries with a
| declining consumer base. We must therefore sustain population
| growth indefinitely.
|
| Similar humans would presumably prefer more space - perhaps a
| home with a few bedrooms and a decent sized garden where they
| can grow a little food and the kids and play in the summer. But
| we can't have this because it's more economically productive if
| we increase population density such that people increasingly
| live in small flats within high-rise buildings with no gardens
| and little natural light.
|
| And I get it, money is nice... People will trade a lot of
| things for more money, but the government ideally should not
| encourage this.
|
| Ideally the government should be encouraging people to have a
| home with a garden. To have a couple of kids. To grow some of
| their own food. To work in their local community, and therefore
| obtain an education which will help them to be productive
| members of their community - rather than say taking a punt at
| studying journalism at university and hoping they'll get a job
| in some city 200 miles from home and their family.
|
| Just speaking personally, the city I grew up in in the UK has
| become hell to live in over the last couple of decades. It's
| almost impossible to drive around today because of
| densification which has taken place. All of the local fields
| that I played on as a kid have been turned into cheap flats
| which has transformed the semi-rural area I used to live into
| an ugly anti-human concrete jungle. And because of the number
| of people now living around here no one seems to know anyone
| anymore - I walk outside my house and it feels like there's
| random people everywhere, and I've noticed many people around
| me don't even seem to speak English anymore.
|
| It's such a strange thing we are doing... It really makes no
| sense for us to want to live like this.
| OgsyedIE wrote:
| Moving from the current situation to the situation you describe
| is impossible, because the UK has far too much debt and far too
| small an annual government income to pay for even the popular
| kinds of infrastructure spending, let alone the degrowth
| proposition you articulate. The millionaires really do take
| their assets and leave if taxes are raised and a Mossad-style
| international program to repatriate them in duffel bags would
| see the government that initiated it both out of power
| permanently and in cells themselves.
| anthk wrote:
| Spaniard there, from rural background. Self-suficient... you
| wish. Post civil war even oranges were a luxury, something to
| be give as a present in Christmas. Any autharchic attemp, be
| left or right, just produced famines and misery.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Smells like Soviet censorship.
| beejiu wrote:
| The UK is consistently amongst the lowest household expenditure
| on food in the _entire_ world. Only 3 countries in the world are
| self sufficient in food. If this "reasonable worst-case"
| scenario happens, surely the UK is one of the better placed to
| deal with it?
| AlBugdy wrote:
| Most countries could easily adapt to other types of food. There
| are multiple source for carbs, fat and proteins, as well for
| various micronutrients. Some countries where obesity is rampant
| could also adapt to eating a lot less than they do now. That
| would bring the number from 3 (assuming that's true) to a lot
| more.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-05 23:00 UTC)