Defense Department falls in line with climate denialism

The U.S. Department of Defense has ignored the administration’s climate-denial cue cards in the past, but now it has scrubbed references to climate change and rising seas from a report about threats to its military bases, according to an unpublished draft obtained by the Washington Post. Originally drafted in 2016, the report summarizes the results of a survey that details how climate change is affecting U.S. bases across the globe. A ballistic missile test site in the Marshall Islands, for instance, is already facing down rising tides (along with the rest of the archipelago). Since January of this year, the Pentagon has stripped the report almost entirely of the phrase “climate change” (from 23 mentions to 1), removed references to the loss of Arctic ice and sea-levels rises, and expunged a map of climate-vulnerable areas. The changes are consistent with the Trump administration's previous use of euphemisms, such as swapping the term "climate change" with “extreme weather.”