The National Wildlife Federation's new publication "The Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the United States" gives wildlife a new meaning.  Citing evidence that many in the climate alarmist community are "frustrated and burned out," it quotes one member as trying to keep on persuading mankind that a climate apocalypse is at hand so "I will not be able to feel the angst or despair" of failure.

For nearly three decades, certain U.S., U.K., and U.N. activists, like NASA's James Hanson, have tried to sell governments on draconian centralized economic policies supposedly to save the planet.  Anyone disagreeing -- regardless of credentials and reasoning -- becomes the target of rhetorical terrorism.  But the skeptical resistance is so strong and growing so rapidly -- not just in the public, but also among scientists -- that the alarmists increasingly show signs of both despair and loss of self-control.

In his recent Forbes article, alarmist Steve Zwick, apparently inspired by Hanson's tirades, wants the scientifically unpersuaded to be hunted down and their homes burned.  Daniel Souweine of the Soros-funded Citizen Engagement Lab demands that TV weathercasters who disagree that man is the prime cause of climate change to be persecuted until they repent.

A rational person would think a call for psychological intervention would be directed against such behavior.  Not so.  The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) now calls upon government to bankroll massive intervention by the mental health community to deal with up to 200 million cases of stress from projected "climate related events and incidents."

Then, in language reminiscent of Mao Tse-tung's education camps for the non-compliant, the NWF eagerly anticipates how government-funded psychological experts will break down denial and bring "rational thinking into decision making."  Such experts will merely extend the present authority for reporting child abuse to reporting climate skepticism!  Oregon professor Kari Norgaard already argues that scientific disagreement on the cause of climate change is an aberrant sociological behavior that must be treated.

These strident calls for an end to free thought are based, according to NWF, on "knowing full well what the science is telling us."  What science is telling us?  Where?  In adjusted surface temperature data sets?  In the misfit between actual global temperatures and model projections?  In the limited effect of doubling CO₂ of about a degree Celsius?  In the global warming of the medieval period and other ages past due to yet unknown natural causes -- causes that somehow have mysteriously ceased so that we "know full well" that the present gradual warming must be due to man?

The real source of "what the science is telling us" is a sociological phenomenon that President Eisenhower warned about in 1961 -- a phenomenon readily recognizable in the case of the military but apparently ignored in the case of science.  Most students of government are aware of his warning against misplaced power of the military-industrial complex.

Few, however, have read two paragraphs further, where Ike also warned, "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. ... We must also be alert...that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

Shrinks aren't needed to heal the imagined sickness of widespread scientifically based disagreement.  If they want a project, why not study the dynamics of the climate elite that suppresses publication of contrary papers, withholds funds from politically incorrect research, and demands conformity of educational curricula with its political agenda of globalism?

Oh, and, while they're at it, why not check the increasing human wildlife behavior of certain alarmists?

Charles Clough, M.S., Meteorology is retired chief of the U.S. Army Atmospheric Effects Team at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, where he focused on atmospheric measurement technology, and is a contributing writer for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.