Association of American Universities

Those wondering how the frantic obsession with existential global warming, now "climate change", came to be bring up left-wing academics like Michael Mann of hockey stick fame, Al Gore and his unbalancing earth, Greta Thunberg's teen outrage and hypocritical elitist John Forbes Kerry. Those frauds are all part of the problem, which isn't a coterie of them and their allies but instead an organized effort by an organization. 

That organization is the Association of American Universities. Founded in 1900 to advance the interests of the most prominent research universities it now consists of 69 of the most prestigious US institutions and two from Canada. This group has announced its ostensible purpose but it's a more complicated affair than one might suspect.

  AAU member universities collectively help shape policy for higher education, science, and innovation; promote best practices in undergraduate and graduate education, and strengthen the contributions of leading research universities to American society.

A more comprehensive list of their goals would be to maintain a relationship with government that insures the funding of research, which also allows members to employ the most respected researchers and best facilities. The best way to strengthen the contributions to American society is to determine what research is most important, acquire funding and convince government and the media that the research points the way to positive results. It's also the case that an astonishing number of the grads from these schools are decision-makers in government, the media and business. They make up the American elite and are unlikely to reject the very education they so dearly paid for and that has earned them a place at the top echelon of society.

Presently the most important subject for research is climate change. The pr flacks at AAU universities are diligently promoting their efforts to save the world to government, the media, the educational establishment and business. So far it has worked on that subject and they've moved on to electrical vehicles and mysterious deadly infections. Important officials ignorant of science, Secretary of the Army Christine Warmuth, for example, lean on the AAU personnel for background and details of the latest boiling ocean and receding glacier. Since these sources come from the best research universities in the country their fantasies are accepted as truth without further examination. If programs from all 69 agree in principle how can they be wrong?

Blaming the government and the media for the insanity of climate change hysteria, pandemic lockdowns and the cancellation of internal combustion power is easy to do and not really a mistake. However, without the impetus of the organized research community giving validity to the ideas they would never have legs. The most prestigious and wealthy American university of all, Harvard, is a leader in exploiting climate panic for money.

The imposition of mandatory masking, "social distancing" and lock downs by federal and state governments could never have occurred without the endorsement of nearly anonymous university research teams.

Students, graduates, employees and neighbors of these institutions are proud of them. They don't realize that the rot that is consuming so many other aspects of US society and culture infects these universities as well. Or  maybe they do. They might consider it a positive.