Ick, the Guardian appears to be severly misrepresenting a Pentagon climate change document. Here's a couple of zingers:

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

I have serious doubt whether this document predicts anything. Most likely, its a contingency planning document that presupposes abrupt climate change in order to develop a military strategy for dealing with its possibility - regardless of how slight it may be.

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists.

Bush has never denied climate change exists. What Bush (and loads of others) don't accept is that the climate change we are seeing is man-made rather than just a part of a normal temperature cycle. There's a huge distinction between those two positions and the inability of these authors to acknowledge it goes a long way towards revealing their intentions here.

Just for giggles, here's the whole list of Pentagon climate change 'predictions' according to the Guardian.

UPDATE: Um, yeah, its just like I thought. And here's the actual report in question.

UPDATE #2: Here's a snippit from the actual report:

Rather than predicting how climate change will happen, our intent is to dramatize the impact climate change could have on society if we are unprepared for it. Where we describe concrete weather conditions and implications, our aim is to further the strategic conversation rather than to accurately forecast what is likely to happen with a high degree of certainty. Even the most sophisticated models cannot predict the details of how the climate change will unfold, which regions will be impacted in which ways, and how governments and society might respond. However, there appears to be general agreement in the scientific community that an extreme case like the one depicted below is not implausible. Many scientists would regard this scenario as extreme both in how soon it develops, how large, rapid and ubiquitous the climate changes are. But history tells us that sometimes the extreme cases do occur, there is evidence that it might be and it is DOD’s job to consider such scenarios.

It took me less than a minute to read for myself that this document is not a prediction - what the hell was the Guardian reading? Also notice the talk of consensus in there again. Shame, shame, science and consensus don't mix.

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