“Environmental science is a contentious and intensely politicized field,” as the late Michael Crichton correctly noted in his 2004 best-selling novel State of Fear.  And, without a doubt, one particular subset of environmental science - climate science - has been intensely politicized.

Today, the politics of change is investing heavily in a climate of fear.  Based on faulty climate model predictions, the Administration is employing social engineering to grind ahead with a program to crush coal use. Coal and other fossil fuels relied upon for power generation are proffered as scary because they supposedly cause “dirty weather” and other global warming hobgoblins to materialize around the world.

But, although the administration defers to the “settled,” “consensus” view that increased carbon dioxide emissions from power plants will cause global temperatures to rise dramatically, that rise has dramatically not happened for more than 15 years.  Nor is it likely to happen any time in the next few decades, because water vapor, ocean circulations, and solar activity play a dominant role in climate regulation.

Regardless, essential power-generation jobs in the U.S. will be lost over the Administration's obsessive actions based on the dubious climate claim. And, so will relief for those in desperate need of low-cost abundant fossil-fuel energy worldwide.

Right now, there’s a billion-dollar bonanza in government funding for climate-change research, education and reeducation, engineering and reengineering, and state and local government programs.  Heaps of public dollars are ready for the taking for anyone willing to help the feds continue generating and fine-tuning the gloomy “gospel” that preaches “The end is near for low-cost, home-grown, abundant energy use.”  Furthermore, financing is readily available for subsequently fixing a climate problem that doesn’t exist with solutions that don’t work.

In a world so full of contemporary tangible tragedies - abject poverty, barbarous invaders, cold-hearted tyrants, ethnic and religious persecution, swelling terrorism - it’s a sad curiosity that so much effort and other-peoples-money is spent on international negotiations to fix the global climate. Consider that the President’s climate and energy team, which participates in such negotiations, includes the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of State with the State Department’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, in addition to the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator and military advisors, among others.  That’s a lot of fire power for an ethereal enemy.

If only the nation’s tremendous capital and good-will could continue to be directed toward helping deliver the embattled citizens of the world from real enemies like ISIS, then maybe real progress can be made in solving real crises.

But, it seems that all that can be offered to the truly needy here and abroad is pious platitudes, because the ideology of the comfortable takes precedence. And, taxpayers should know that beaucoup bucks are being shoveled into the climate-change cause, not because it is a serious frightening possibility, but because it is politically expedient.

Anthony J. Sadar, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic’s Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books).