For several years now the climatistas have liked to point out that the Pentagon—the military industrial complex!—is down with climate alarmism, issuing a series of reports saying that climate change might be a serious security risk in the future. I always enjoy this celebration, because it is the first time I can remember that the left has embraced with complete credulity something coming out of the Pentagon, which they otherwise wish to gut if not abolish. (By how much do Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders want to cut the defense budget?) Equally amusing is the lack of any perception that Pentagon bureaucrats, like all bureaucrats, might just be engaged in protecting their future budgets by embracing the cause of the moment.

Someone with a wayback machine has brought back to life this Guardian story from 2004 about the first such Pentagon warning:

A “Siberian climate” for Britain by 2020? I suppose it could still happen in the next 72 hours before 2020 arrives, though I am confused since another prominent climate claim for Britain back in those days was that “snowfalls are a thing of the past.”

I like this sentence further down in the story:

By 2020 ‘catastrophic’ shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war.

So where are these “catastrophic” shortages of water and energy supply? Where water is in short supply, it is almost invariably because of “water socialism” (California specializes in this), while conventional energy is in such abundance at the moment that the biggest problem facing energy producers is how to enforce production cuts enough to keep prices up.

Well maybe the Pentagon just jumped the gun, and climate disaster still looms. In which case I expect climatistas will want to continue supporting a robust defense budget. (Heh.)