The Defense Department edited an Obama-era report to downplay the Pentagon's focus on climate-related threats, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The report, which details which military outposts are at risk due to rising sea levels and changing temperatures, used to reference "climate change" 23 times. Now, the phrase only appears once. Instead, the document reports that "extreme weather" and "climate" are responsible for the risks to military bases around the world.
Edits to the report also removed maps that showed which military sites could be affected by rising sea levels and scrubbed a reference to melting sea ice in the Arctic. The original document was drafted in December 2016, and explicitly reported that military sites would be affected by climate change, citing an urgent need to prepare for global changes.
A Pentagon spokesperson told the Post that the changes to the report didn't mean the DOD was abandoning efforts to prepare for the impact of "a wide range of threats, including climate."
Read more at The Washington Post.