Ironically, just months after the business-friendly Bush administration squelched the climate change section of the Environmental Protection Agency’s report on the environment, the world’s second largest insurer released a report revealing how climate change is rising on the corporate agenda. Swiss Re’s report warns that global warming could aggravate the costs of natural disasters causing them to spiral out of control and forcing the world into a catastrophe of its own making. The report estimates that the costs of such disasters could double to $150 billion a year in 10 years, hitting insurers with $30 billion to $40 billion in claims, or the equivalent of one World Trade Center attack annually. "The human race can lead itself into this climatic catastrophe -- or it can avert it.'' Regardless of the importance and magnitude of the global warming problem as revealed by this report, the Bush administration refuses to allow the nation’s top environmental agency to address the problem openly and honestly. Interestingly, the U.S. does not appear to be alone in its denial of the global warming issue. The U.K. Minister’s Office attempted to gag its top scientific advisor, Sir David King, after he wrote a scathing article in the Jan. 9 issue of Science denouncing U.S. policy on climate change or lack thereof. Sir David stated, "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism." A leaked memo from the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary, Mr. Rogers, reveals Sir David was ordered to decline any interview requests after the article's release. The memo claims, “This sort of discussion does not help us achieve our wider policy aims.” Support for Sir David King’s position came from Hans Blix, the former United Nations chief weapons inspector. Blix also agreed that security concerns might be unwisely eclipsing safety issues. Blix stated on BBC1's Breakfast with Frost, "I think we still overestimate the danger of terror. There are other things that are of equal, if not greater, magnitude, like the environmental global risks." However, the U.S. also appears as unwilling to address global warming as a potential security issue as it is to view it as genuine environmental problem. A report commissioned by a Pentagon think tank urging that climate change be elevated to and U.S. security concern will not be forwarded on to the Department of Defense. The report, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security,” examined the security implications of a worst-case global warming scenario. The report noted “that because of the potentially dire consequences, the risk of abrupt climate change — although uncertain and quite possibly small — should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern.”