The University of Kansas and Kansas State University, along with two universities in Oklahoma, have received a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation Office of the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.

The grant is funding research that will examine how climate change affects various elements of the Kansas environment, and then this research will be made available as a resource for educators in K-12 schools as well as colleges and universities through an online tool.

The National Science Foundation is a federal agency that was created by Congress in 1950. The NSF is funded by Congress through taxpayer dollars with an annual budget of about $6.06 billion.

The NSF funds roughly 20 percent of research conducted at the university level and has provided funding for several research projects in Kansas.

Leonard Krishtalka, co-principal investigator for the Kansas portion of the project, said the findings of the research would be available to be utilized by the public and educators through an online database.

“This virtual cyber network will allow teams of scientists to work together via the web for the assimilation of environmental data,” Krishtalka told Kansas Liberty.

Krishtalka, director of KU’s Biodiversity Institute, said the “cyberCommons” would be intended to provide the most accurate scientific information available, and that the findings could also be utilized by legislators for decision-making.

The research will focus on how climate change, as well as changes in how land is used, will affect plant and animal diseases and invasive species. The researchers will not actually be measuring climate change, but rather utilizing existing climate change data to evaluate how it affects the environment.

Krishtalka said that climate change could be considered as one element of global warming.

According to the NSF funding database, the University of Kansas is also receiving other grants to research global climate change, including a $4 million grant that will fund research that looks at “the accelerating impacts of global climate change” by “evaluating the effect of human land cover change on the climate system." The research will also look into the need for renewable energy sources.

The University of Kansas Center for Research is also receiving an approximate $3 million grant from the NSF to create an education network that will allow students, educators and government leaders to learn about global environmental changes and how these changes could influence their local environment.

Although many environmentalists argue that research into climate change and global warming is necessary to preserve the Earth, Dan Miller, executive vice president and publisher of the Heartland Institute, isn’t buying the claims.

The Heartland Institute is a free-market think tank based in Chicago that seeks to market “sound science.”

Miller said the Heartland Institute’s stance on global warming, which was determined after consulting with various renowned climatologists, scientists and meteorologists, is that it is unlikely the Earth faces an eminent crisis of global warming, and that it is also unlikely that human activity has contributed whatsoever to global warming activity that has occurred in the 20th century.

Miller pointed out that we are in a period of time where a cooling of temperatures has occurred within the last decade as a part of a normal warming and cooling trend that has occurred for eons.

Miller said he believed that the inundation of government funding to promote global warming research is based on the desire to perpetuate the myth that global warming is an immediate danger to the Earth.

The government regularly pours billions of dollars into research, Miller pointed out, such as the grants being provided to Kansas universities, and that he thought that the end result of research projects would be an interpretation of the commonly used argument that global warming is an immediate danger to the Earth.

“If they came up with the conclusion that the Earth is not in crisis, then the people who gave them the funds would not feel they got their money’s worth,” Miller told Kansas Liberty. “It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Miller said the Heartland Institute has traced funds being allocated to these types of research projects back to the federal government, which generally seeks to continually fund and grow itself, as well as the alternative energy industry.

“So of course they will finance and fund individuals who will reinforce the idea that there is global warming and that it is a crisis to the Earth,” Miller said.

Miller said he had grave concerns about the research funded through federal grants trickling down into K-12 classrooms.

“It is reprehensible that this type of propaganda will be forced on these kids in public schools,” he said. “Teachers are all too eager to latch on to a liberal agenda with a number of things. Students are very impressionable and will absorb this into their hard drive and come out the other end as very close minded.”

Miller acknowledged that though the Kansas constitution requires that education be balanced and fair, propaganda regarding global warming promoted by the “global warming alarmism camp” has lead to the widespread belief that global warming is a fact, and one that must be taught to students.

“Being fair and balanced just goes out the window when there is this prevailing wisdom that the Earth is in crisis,” he said.

The teaching of global warming is a decision that is determined at the local level in Kansas, said Karla Denny, director of communications for the Kansas State Department of Education.

Though the National Science Foundation has regularly funded research in universities across the county for many years, this particular grant comes at a time when cap-and-trade legislation is being considered that would allow for unprecedented government involvement in the energy industry.

The Waxman-Markey cap and trade, which places caps on emissions while implementing fees for utility providers, barely passed the House in June and is likely to be debated on the Senate floor in the near future.

Promoters of these cap-and-trade, or cap-and-“tax” bills generally tout the idea that the legislation is needed to stave off environmental disaster that comes with global warming. Opponents to the bill argue that implementing changes is unnecessary and will cost taxpayers billions.

The U.S. Treasury Department admitted in documents released last week that a cap-and-trade policy could cost taxpayers $300 billion per year. The Treasury Department documents, which were obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, demonstrate the department’s admittance that although a cap-and-trade policy could generate some revenue, and creates environmental benefits, “it will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of tens (and potentially hundreds) of billions of dollars.”

An August Heritage Foundation report showed that a cap-and-trade bill could result in the loss of 1.9 million jobs by 2012, and 2.5 million jobs by 2035.

Americans for Prosperity has launched a campaign against cap-and-trade legislation, arguing that global warming is being used as a scare tactic to promote legislation that will increase government interference, while driving up energy costs to families and businesses.

Derrick Sontag, state director for AFP-Kansas, said he thought the timing of the grants was somewhat suspicious.

“There is no question that the momentum they once had for cap and trade has diminished,” Sontag told Kansas Liberty. “Perhaps there is more to this grant than what appears on the surface.”

Sontag said AFP believed that cap-and-trade policy is designed to fix “an unproven crisis.”

Resources

Heritage Foundation
www.heritage.org

Heartland Institute
www.heartland.org

Treasury Department records
http://www.openmarket.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/foia-release.pdf

National Science Foundation
http://www.nsf.gov/index.jsp

KU press release on grant
http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/september/18/nsfgrant.shtml

The Week in Review