Today, for a moment, I thought, It's been a while since I've gone reading on the left end of the world. Wonder what's up?

Although most right-leaning news sources seem to be little more than links to those from the left, a statement of "Look what they're saying now!" and then a couple of links to more neutral (or even leftist) sources which refute the current error, I still feel the need to try to see the world from "the other" point of view now and then.

Usually, this exercise ends in an utter failure to do so. Why?

Because usually, I can read about one article before I feel a compulsive need to (a) consider, (b) research, (c) note untruth, and (d) blog. In this case, I was quickly linked to a Guardian story: "Now the Pentagon Tells Bush: climate change will destroy us"

You know the plot: The earth will freeze/boil in no time flat, a secret report confirms it (from the Pentagon?), Bush is covering it up to protect his friends in Saudi Arabia/Texas/Washington, etc.

And of course, my usual initial wonderments: Since when did the Pentagon know anything about environmental science? Why wouldn't other mainstream, leftist scientists have noticed the evidence? If it was really so secret, how come the "Observer" knows all about it? and What are the odds this will turn out to be yet another fraud?

Pretty high, apparently. A few more clicks over to Instapundit, and, sure enough, yup, it is yet another left-biased hoax.

To be brief, it's not a "report" on the future or a serious prediction and the folks who put it together apparently aren't scientists of any kind. It's a military "what-if" training exercise based on an admittedly improbable scenario. According to Tim Blair, it's been publicly known for a quite a while. He cites Fortune magazine as saying, last month:

The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help planners think about coping strategies.

And the report's author as saying:

This is very much in the spirit of thinking the unthinkable. The report that we put together for the Pentagon is an extreme scenario, in the sense that most climatologists would say that this is low probability, in the sense of it happening soon, and as pervasively. But it is the Pentagon's job to think about many cases, [even] the worst-case scenario.

And, apparently, the damage is already done -- it's been reprinted in many outlets, marketed as a "secret" that the Evil Diktator Herr Busch(TM) is hiding from the world, splashed across the US, the UK, Australia, and who knows, probably also Canada, France and Germany.

"A lie is halfway around the world before truth gets its shoes laced." Of course, it takes no time at all to mindlessly parrot stories which confirm your biases. It takes a good bit more to gather evidence as to whether they're right.

So today thousands or millions of people will read this story in their various news sources, think "Oh, that evil George Bush!" (or "Oh, that evil America!") for the hundredth time, and shift slightly to the left. A fraction of those will wonder if it's all true, and an even smaller number will look to the blogosphere for the rest of the story.

When it comes to the liberal worldview, it's my consistent observation that "the large print giveth, the fine print taketh away." In this case, the fine print isn't even to be found in the same publication. Who prints the follow-up stories showing this stuff is false? Nobody.

So people gradually store up these false stories in their minds, accreting into a kind of fantasy liberal worldview, built on lie after lie after lie.

First link from a liberal web site. Bam. Obvious fraud.

That's so sad, that so many suck it up.