Modern American Science has grown corrupt in the same way that $Trillion defense acquisition programs go corrupt. They burn through money by ginning up a threat that must be countered by massive action. The massive action never gets taken, while the threat never materializes. But the secular preachers of doom assure us that Armageddon is gathering in the gloaming. Therefore they need more money and more action now.

If there were any scientific hoax that epitomized dishonest science the way the F-35 is now symbolic of failed defense acquisition, it would obviously be the Pilt-Down Man of the Geo-Sciences; Global Warming. May 5, 2015 turned out way better than the experts predicted. According to the UN, we were doomed. Doomed by 2015, and there was no looking back. Why? You guessed it; Global Warming!

By 2014, when nobody was conveniently keeling over in the street to verify the scare theories, the UN doubled down on DOOM!

Depending on circumstances and values, “currently observed impacts might already be considered dangerous,” the report says. It mentions extreme weather and rising sea levels, such as heat waves, flooding and droughts. It even raises, as an earlier report did, the idea that climate change will worsen violent conflicts and refugee problems and could hinder efforts to grow more food. And ocean acidification, which comes from the added carbon absorbed by oceans, will harm marine life, it says. Without changes in greenhouse gas emissions, “climate change risks are likely to be high or very high by the end of the 21st century,” the report says.

This, of course was after the program had “slipped to the right.*” You see the whole thing was supposed to have gone “Kaboom!” back in 2000.

A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Brown…

So the obvious fact here is that the truth or falsehood of Global Warming is not important to the people getting paid to hawk global warming scares. The same way that whether or not the F-35 can engage an enemy unit in air-to-air combat doesn’t have any bearing on whether it lurches forward ever on. The goal here is the perpetual funding stream unto retirement.

We all know well that President Eisenhower was seer-like in predicting the debacle that is the F-35. He said the following regarding Defense Procurement in his farewell address.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

The part of the Eisenhower Address I selected above is almost cliché. What is lesser known and equally prescient is what President Eisenhower had to say about American scientific research.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

What Eisenhower warned us about has come to pass. Our scientists are now grant-winners. They don’t move us forward. The United States will never return to the moon or put men on Mars. Nor will we ever usher in the Nano-technical Diamond Age envisioned by Neal Stephenson. These accomplishments require a scientific establishment dedicated to finding truth over finding research dollars. Scare-mongers get paid, inventors get their patents trolled. That is the true threat of Global Warming to the American commonweal.

*-Defense Acquisition slang for a program falling behind schedule. If it gets done at a date to the right of where you put it on a schedule chart, it’s late.