Not only is the Obama administration hell-bent on combating alleged global warming (a close personal agenda item for both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry), but it appears the federal government is going to great – and somewhat odd – lengths to prove how humans are destroying the planet and bringing about our own inevitable doom.
Here are just three of millions of dollars’ worth of grant projects the National Science Foundation published just last week that focus on studying climate change and the impending destruction of mankind.
1. Studying arctic shrubbery ($17,264)
Apparently, man-made global warming has caused shrub growth in the arctic, which is potentially mucking up the arctic ecosystem and therefore simply must be studied. In response, the federal government handed over more than $17k to the University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc. to study… well, shrubs. You know, the evil ones we caused.
From the nearly $20k NSF grant description:
Higher temperatures have already triggered widespread expansion of large, woody shrubs across arctic tundra, and appear to stimulate the loss of soil carbon. This research examines whether shrubs change the composition of microbial communities in a way that positively impacts the shrub growth. This information is critical to understanding how shrubs affect carbon pools of plants and soils in the arctic. Using arctic soils from Alaska, the investigators will establish a plant growth experiment to determine how shrubs respond to different treatments of soil microbes and nutrients. By investigating plants, soils, and microbes in one experiment, this work will improve the accuracy of models of arctic carbon dynamics.
2. Charting 2,000-Year-Old Norse Settlements ($348,218)
Apparently, figuring out why a bunch of Nordic people abandoned their homes in Greenland a couple thousand years ago will provide us insight into the current and future impact of climate change in the North Atlantic – or something. According to a $350k NSF grant description submitted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst:
The climate in southern Greenland is a key area for reconstructions of the North Atlantic Oscillation, a major pattern of northern hemisphere climate, and is also linked to Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation changes, an important oceanic process controlling north Atlantic climate, which recent studies suggest has been weaker over recent decades than at any time in the last 1000 years. This is also the region where Norse settlements were abandoned by the early-15th century; many questions still remain about the causative factors. Although climate change is often cited as the reason for settlement failure, this explanation rests on a very poorly constrained scientific foundation and other explanations have also been proposed.
So even though the grant description itself admits that blaming climate change as the reason why these folks up and left their settlements back in the day is a shaky-at-best theory lacking any definitive proof, the feds still feel the need to shuck out hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars to study it anyway.
Why? Well, because:
This project will generate new high resolution, quantitative records of temperature and hydrology for the past 2,000 years from lakes in coastal regions of southern and southwestern Greenland, an area that has important links to the broader climate dynamics of the North Atlantic.
Hey. If the shoe doesn’t fit, force it.
3. Determining 5-Million Year-Old Mediterranean Sea Levels ($297,49)
As if 2,000-year-old settlements in Greenland don’t go far back enough to support climate change claims, researchers at the University of South Florida just secured nearly $300k in taxpayer money to study 5 million-year-old Mediterranean sea levels. Because apparently, our current measurements of ancient sea levels are shoddy and don’t accurately pinpoint how high the water level will rise as the earth heats up, ultimately killing us all.
From the NSF grant description:
This is important because current published sea level highstands during past interglacial climate are significantly above modern sea level and vary widely over time. The precision of such results are still controversial and accurate data to realistically evaluate potential sea level by the century's end is critical.
It's critical, we tell you. Because the last time the Mediterranean Sea overflowed...